
Class 

Book. 

Copyright N°. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



POCKET EDITION OF 

TOLS TOI'S W ORKS 

14 volumes, printed on Bible paper. Flexi- 
ble cloth, $1 .00 per volume. Limp leather, 
$1 .50 per volume. Volumes sold separately. 



WAR AND PEACE. 3 vols. 

ANNA KARENINA. 2 vols. 

RESURRECTION 

CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, YOUTH 

I THE COSSACKS 

< SEVASTOPOL 

I THE INVADERS, and Other Stories 

( A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR, and Other Stories 

< FAMILY HAPPINESS. A Romance 

I DEATH OF IVAN ILYITCH, and Other Stories 

i THE LONG EXILE 

< STORIES FOR CHILDREN 
I WALK IN THE LIGHT 

( MASTER AND MAN 

< KREUTZER SONATA 
I DRAMAS 

I MY CONFESSION 

1 MY RELIGION 

I THE GOSPEL IN BRIEF 

S WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 
{LIFE 

( THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU 
•^WHAT IS ART? 
(WHAT IS RELIGION? 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 



TO 



t^flft&urfe^x 



THE LIFE OF COUNT 

LYOF N. TOLSTOI 



BY 



NATHAN HASKELL DOLE 

AUTHOR OF "FAMOUS COMPOSERS"; TRANSLATOR OF 
"ANNA KARENINA," "WAR AND PEACE," ETC. 



NEW YORK 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 




3 



%% 



A 



Copyright, 191 i 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY. 



Published November, ign. 



©CIA303015 



PREFACE 

There is a vast amount of authentic material for recon- 
structing the life of Tolstoi'. It exists in autobiographical 
fragments, in multitudes of letters, in the three volumes 
compiled by Biryukof under Tolstoi's own directions. 
There are many leaves from his own experiences in nearly 
all of his writings — though, as in the case of Goethe's 
"Dichtung und Wahrheit, " it requires caution to differ- 
entiate between what actually happened and what were 
the figments of his poetic imagination. Even these 
picture the evolution of his soul, and Tolstoi was far more 
interested in his soul than he was concerned with his body. 

It is the biographer's only duty to gather all the light 
he can from all possible sources and concentrate it in his 
lens, taking care that it be not colored by his own preju- 
dices or personality. My chief authorities, aside from 
Tolstoi's own writings (including a collection of five 
hundred and sixty- two letters under the title "Tolstovsky 
Almanakh") are Biryukof (as far as accessible), Aylmer 
Maude's two- volume Life, Behrs's " Recollections," and 
Edward A. Steiner's " Tolstoy, the Man." 

It would make a list quite too long to mention all the 
other books and articles which have proved helpful. 
Lack of space precluded an appendix to contain repre- 
sentative extracts from the recollections or opinions of 
Julius Froebel (from his "Lebenslauf," published in 
Stuttgart in 189 1), Eugene Schuyler's Essays, George 
Kennan's article which Tolstoi' himself verified, Presi- 
dent White's Autobiography, D. E. Ovsyannikof- 
Kulikovsky's Sketch of Tolstoi's activities, and many 



vi PREFACE 

others. Such an appendix would have grown into a 
volume itself. It had to be greatly curtailed. But all 
these materials have gone to making the book, which is 
rather a plain narration than an attempt to rectify or 
criticise Tolstoi's opinions and theories. One cannot 
read Tolstoi or about Tolstoi and refrain from forming an 
opinion. His biographer, even if he completely dissent 
from his conclusions and regret the course taken by his 
life, which like a river winds through superb and pictur- 
esque mountains, skirts fertile prairies and is shaded by 
glorious forests, and may also wander into arid deserts, 
must recognize that it is the same river, however, and 
must follow it reverently and sympathetically. If rever- 
ence and sympathy are lacking, it cannot be a fair 
biography. 

One word must be added as to the spelling of Tolstoi's 
name. It is absolutely a triviality of transliteration 
whether it be spelled with a final i or y. Unquestionably 
the author himself in signing his letters in French or 
English spelled it Leo Tolstoy. Is it necessary to con- 
form to his spelling of it when it goes against the ratified 
recommendation of the Society of Librarians? The 
dieresis corresponds fairly well to the i s kratkoi of the 
Russian letter. It is the way it was first spelled both in 
French and in English. It is such a small matter that it 
seems hardly worth while to mention it. But the ques- 
tion has been raised, and it is well to let the world know 
that the spelling with i is perfectly correct and has the 
weight of scientific authority behind it. In the book 
all Russian words and proper names, unless otherwise 
indicated, are pronounced with the accent on the penult. 
Dates are invariably given in new style, the old style be- 
ing twelve days in the nineteenth century and thirteen 
days in this century behind the calendar of civilization. 

Nathan Haskell Dole. 

Boston, October i, 191 1. 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Tolstoi Family i 

II. Early Recollections 9 

III. Childhood at Yasnaya 17 

IV. School-days in Kazan 24 

V. The Benevolent Young Proprietor .... 30 

VI. A Flight to the Caucasus 39 

VII. A Cossack Volunteer 48 

VIII. Stirrings of a New Spirit 56 

EX. First Appearance in Print 64 

X. Spiritual Growth 70 

XL The Crimean War 76 

XII. The Sevastopol Sketches 81 

XIII. Military Life 87 

PART II 

TOLSTOI THE WRITER 

I. In Literary Circles at Petersburg .... 93 

II. An Experimental Love Affair 10 1 

III. First Journey Abroad no 

IV. Events of the Year 1858 126 

V. Phases of Inner Development 136 

VI. Second Journey Abroad 141 

VII. Educational Studies Abroad 149 

VIII. The Quarrel with Turgenief 160 

IX. An Umpire of Peace .169 

X. Educational Activities 174 

XL Collisions with Officials 182 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

PART III 

FAMILY LIFE 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Marriage 191 

II. "War and Peace' ' 198 

III. Characteristics 205 

IV. Historical Fiction 215 

V. Life in the Steppe 228 

VI. Educational Methods 236 

VII. "Anna Karenina" 241 

VIII. Tolstoi and Music 249 

IX. Changing Views 264 

PART IV 

THE THEOLOGIAN 

I. Theological Studies 270 

II. A Pilgrimage 278 

III. Arguments Resulting from Diverging Views. 281 

IV. Slumming in Moscow 285 

V. New Acquaintances 290 

VI. Manual Labor 295 

VII. The Crime of Property 300 

VIII. Literature for the Masses 304 

IX. Change of Personality 318 

X. Activities of 1887-88 322 

XI. "The Kreutzer Sonata" 329 

XII. Rules for Perfection 335 

XIII. Famine Relief . . 340 

XIV. Public Utterances 347 

XV. The Dukhobors 352 

XVI. Tolstoi and Art 360 

PART V 

THE EXCOMMUNICATED TEACHER 

I. Tolstoi and the Holy Synod 367 

II. Popular Ovations 374 

III. A Winter in the Crimea 379 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IV. Later Writings 384 

V. Visits to an Insane Asylum 392 

VI. " Titan entangled in Foul Circumstance' ' . 397 

VII. The Wounded Lion seeks a Lair 402 

VIII. The Funeral 407 

IX. Estimates of Tolstoi 414 

APPENDICES 

I. Chronology of the Life and Writings of 

Count L. N. Tolstoi 425 

II. Tolstoian Colonies 443 

III. Tolstoi in the Eyes of his Contemporaries. ,447 

Index 455 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Count Lyof Nikolayevitch Tolstoi Frontispiece^ 

OPP. PAGE 

Pyotr Andreyevitch Tolstoi, the First Count Tolstoi . . 4^ 

The Tolstoi Home at Yasnaya Polyana 12^ 

Avenue of Birch Trees at Yasnaya Polyana 18 

Entrance to the Park at Yasnaya Polyana 26^ 

Count Tolstoi in 1851 40^ 

Count Tolstoi in 1855 82 ^ 

Count Tolstoi in 1857 n6 v 

Count Tolstoi in i860 138 ** 

Count Tolstoi in 1862 170 \s 

The House at Yasnaya Polyana used as a School. . . . 180 v^ 

Countess Tolstaya in i860, before her Marriage .... 192 ^ 

Count Tolstoi in 1868 222 ^ 

Count Tolstoi in 1876 234^ 

Ivan Turgenief 268^ 

Count Tolstoi's Favorite Exercise 282 ^ 

Gay's Portrait of Count Tolstoi 288 < 

House of Count Tolstoi in Moscow 296 ** 

One of the Most Striking Portraits of Count Tolstoi . . 302 i< 

Recreation at Yasnaya Polyana 308 ^ 

Count Tolstoi Plowing 314 v " 

Count Tolstoi in 1887 320 -■' 

Count Tolstoi in His Work-room 332*^ 

The Tolstoi Family dining in the Open Air. ..... 338 ^ 

Count Tolstoi in 1892 344* 

Count and Countess Tolstoi in 1895 35^ 

Facsimile of a Corrected Proof 372^ 

Tchekof and Count Tolstoi during the Crimean Visit . 380^ 

Count Tolstoi and William J. Bryan 390 y* 

A Late Portrait of Count Tolstoi 400 ^ 

The Beginning of One of the "Evening Stories". . . . 418^ 

xi 



THE LIFE OF COUNT 
LYOF NIKOLAYEVITCH TOLSTOI 

PART I 

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION 

I 

THE TOLSTOI FAMILY 

Beyond the reign of Peter the Great nothing is defi- 
nitely known of the origin of the Tolstoi family. The 
name itself signifies "stout." In all countries epithets 
based on personal characteristics, at first used as nick- 
names, become accepted and are then handed down as 
surnames, often dignified with titles of nobility. Whether 
the epithet "stout" came from a German ancestor called 
Dick or Dickmann, or was jocosely applied by the Grand- 
Duke Vasily of Moscow to a descendant of a mythical 
German named Idris who emigrated to Tchernigof in the 
middle of the fourteenth century, is a matter of choice 
between legends. 

Pyotr Andreyevitch Tolstoi, from whom the subject of 
this biography derived in the sixth generation, was born 
in 1645, the year when Alexei' Mikhai'lovitch, the second 
Tsar of the house of Romanof, came to the throne. In 
the struggle between Sofya Alekseyevna and her half- 
brother, the Tsar Peter, this Tolstoi at first supported the 
regent; but when her guards, the Streltsui, deserted to 
Peter's side, Tolstoi did likewise and had his reward. It 
is said that the gigantic Tsar more than once, when drink- 
ing with him, snatched off his wig jestingly, saying: 



2 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

" Golovka, golovka — Little head, little head, hadst thou 
not been so clever thou wouldst long ago have come off 
those shoulders!" 

Pyotr Tolstoi was made an officer in the Streltsui, 
fought in the war against Turkey, and was governor of 
Azof. He spent two years in Italy and was one of 
Peter's companions in the famous tour of European 
shipyards. In the first year of the eighteenth century 
he was sent as Peter's ambassador to the Sultan Mustapha 
III. During the strained relations that kept Russia 
and Turkey on the verge of war, he was frequently ill- 
treated. Twice he was ignominiously thrust into the 
dungeon of the Seven Towers — an experience commem- 
orated in one of the quarterings of the family coat of 
arms. 

During the palmy days of Peter's favorite, Prince Alek- 
sandr Menschikof, Tolstoi served as minister of state and 
played a shameful part in enticing the young Tsesarevitch 
Aleksei back to Russia from the Italian castle of Sant' 
Elmo, where he was in hiding with his Finnish mistress 
Afrosinia. He was present at the secret trial, torture, and 
execution of the unhappy prince, and was again rewarded 
with large estates and promotion to the head of the secret 
chancellery. Yekaterina granted him the title of graf or 
count in the new order of nobility. It was but a brief 
honor, for within two years he incurred the ill-will of the all- 
powerful Menschikof and was stripped of office, title, and 
estates and banished for life to the Solovetsky Monastery, 
situated on a lonely island in the White Sea, where he died 
at the age of eighty-four. He left a diary of his sojourn 
in Italy, a detailed account of the Black Sea, and a trans- 
lation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses." His son Ivan Petro- 
vitch was president of the court, but shared in his down- 
fall and banishment. 

The title was restored to his grandson, Tolstoi's great- 
grandfather. Since it was inherited impartially by all 
descendants, as is the custom in European countries ex- 



THE TOLSTOI FAMILY 3 

cept England, it has had many representatives. One was 
Count Feodor Petrovitch Tolstoi', a well-known artist and 
vice-president of the Imperial Academy of Arts, while 
his nephew Count Aleksei* Konstantinovitch Tolstoi 
(1818-1875) was a famous poet and novelist, whose dra- 
matic trilogy depicting the epoch of Ivan the Terrible and 
his successor Boris Godunof has been produced on the 
Russian stage with barbaric splendor. Another was 
Count Pyotr Aleksandrovitch (1761-1844), who served 
with distinction under Suvorof and became the governor 
of a Department; still another was Count Dmitry Andre- 
yevitch (1823-1889), who was Procurator of the Holy 
Synod, Minister of Education ; and Minister of the Interior, 
and a strong reactionary in all his views and measures. 
He wrote a book entitled " Romanism in Russia." 

Tolstoi's paternal grandfather, Count Ilya Andreye- 
vitch, married Princess Pelageya Nikolayevna Gortcha- 
kova. She was an heiress, but their united fortunes were 
not sufficient to keep up the extravagant style in which 
they lived — fetes, theatricals, musicales, balls, banquets, 
and excursions; and the count's easy-going generosities, 
his speculations and habit of gambling for high stakes 
were his ruin. He got himself appointed Governor of 
Kazan, that half-barbaric city near the Volga, four hun- 
dred and sixty miles east of Moscow. He won the repu- 
tation of not accepting bribes, though his w r ife was not 
above slyly taking gifts. Certain of his characteristics 
seem to have made him the prototype of Count Ilya 
Andreyevitch Rostof in "War and Peace." 

His only son, Nikolai (1 797-1829), when seventeen, at the 
time of the French invasion, entered the army and was 
appointed adjutant to his mother's cousin, Prince Andrei 
Gortchakof. In 18 14 he was sent with dispatches to 
Petersburg, and on his way back to rejoin the army in 
Germany was taken prisoner by the French and carried to 
Paris, where, until the Russian army appeared in 181 5, he 
lived in comparative comfort thanks to a supply of gold 



4 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

which his orderly had managed to keep secreted in his 
boots. 

He attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel and at the 
end of the war went back to Kazan. His father, still 
governor, died in 1820; and in order to recoup the fallen 
fortunes of his family and provide for his aged mother, who 
was accustomed to a life of luxury, he married the plain 
but rich Princess Mariya Volkonskaya. This arrange- 
ment seems to be paralleled in " War and Peace," where 
young Nikolai* Ilyitch renounces his beloved cousin Sofiya 
and marries the elderly but enormously wealthy Princess 
Mariya Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya. 

She was the only daughter of Prince Nikolai Volkonsky, 
of a family that harked back to Rurik the Varyag, founder 
of the Russian Empire. Prince Nikolai had been com- 
mander-in-chief of the army, but when he scornfully 
refused to marry the all-powerful Potyomkin's niece and 
mistress, Varvara Engelhardt, he lost favor and position. 
That lady married Prince Sergyei' Galitsuin, and Tolstoi 
relates how the whirligig of time brought it about that one 
of her ten sons was betrothed from childhood to the 
Princess Mariya but died prematurely. 

Prince Nikolai's wife was the Princess Yekaterina 
Trubetskaya. He lived in proud isolation on his estate of 
Yasnaya Polyana, that is to say Plainfield. Tolstoi says 
of this grandfather, whom he never knew: "He was con- 
sidered a very strict master, but I never heard it asserted 
that he was cruel or that he inflicted the severe punish- 
ments usual at his time. Such instances may have been 
known on his estates, but the muzhiks and servants whom I 
often questioned concerning him cherished the highest re- 
spect for his dignity and ability; and while I have heard my 
father blamed, I never heard anything but praise for my 
grandfather's cleverness, business capacity, and care for 
the welfare of the muzhiks and of his immense house- 
hold." 

An extant portrait of him shows a smooth-shaven face, 




Pyotr Andreyevitch Tolstoi, the First Count Tolstoi. 



THE TOLSTOI FAMILY 5 

with long, aquiline nose, firm, prominent chin, large, sensi- 
tive mouth, and curling hair falling below the ears. Tol- 
stoi's brother-in-law in his " Recollections " discovers in 
the portrait decided resemblances to his famous grandson : 
"the same high, open forehead, the same prominent 
organs of the creative faculty and of musical talent, and 
the same deep-set gray eyes that seem to be gazing into 
the far distance and from under their thick, overhanging 
eyebrows literally pierce the soul of the man on whom 
they are turned. " 

Prince Nikolai' died in 1820, the same year as Count 
Uya Tolstoi, and two years later his orphaned daughter 
was married to Count Nikolai Tolstoi, bringing to him as 
her dower the Yasnaya Polyana estate. 

Tolstoi, in his " Recollections/ ' pays tribute to his mother, 
who died when he was only eighteen months old. He 
says that all that he had learned about her was beautiful. 
" My mother," he says, " was not a handsome woman, but 
she was well-educated for her day. Besides Russian, which 
she wrote correctly, though that was then unusual, she 
knew four languages, French, German, English, and 
Italian. She must have had a considerable talent for the 
arts. She played the piano very well, and friends of hers 
have told me that she had a remarkable gift for improvis- 
ing delightful stories. " 

This gift of story-telling was accompanied by such shy- 
ness that when at a dance she was importuned by her 
friends to amuse them in that way, she would only do so in 
a dark room where she could not be seen. 

Tolstoi also remarks his mother's self-control in spite 
of a naturally hot temper. He says that her maid 
told him that when she was offended she would flush 
but never speak a hasty word. She was entirely indif- 
ferent to the opinions of other people, and this Tclstoi 
explains by the fact that she herself never uttered any 
severe criticisms on others. This characteristic was made 
evident to her son in letters which he had read and in the 



6 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

recollections of her family and friends. He valued it 
highly and illustrated it by an anecdote which he found in 
Dmitry Rostovsky's " Lives of the Saints," in which an old 
monk who had many faults was seen by one of his breth- 
ren in a vision holding a place of honor among the saints 
on the ground that he never spoke ill of any one. "If 
there were such rewards/' said Tolstoi, "I believe that 
my mother and my brother would have received them. " 

Her married life lasted only about nine years and was 
calm and devoted to domestic affairs. Her home in the 
country was remote from neighbors, and only occasionally 
did acquaintances or relatives come to visit her. She 
taught one of her husband's sisters Italian and she liked 
to "do music." She spent her evenings reading aloud to 
her mother-in-law dull, old-fashioned romances or such 
serious books as Rousseau's " Emile. " Her husband had 
a large library of French classics, historical works, and 
books on natural history. He was away more or less, and 
when he was at home she did not see a great deal of him, as 
she intimates in one of her letters to him. It was a typical 
manage de convenance, where the two parties loved and 
respected each other. Her husband knew that she still 
cherished her youthful romantic attachment for her 
youthful lover. She was also passionately fond of a 
young French woman, Mile. Enissienne, who afterwards 
married her cousin, Prince Mikhail Volkonsky. 

Count Nikolai Tolstoi, on the other hand, had loved an 
orphaned relative, Tatyana Aleks£ndrovna Yargolskaya, 
who, like Sonya in "War and Peace," had been brought up 
by his parents. She was a beautiful and vivacious young 
woman, but renounced her love in order that her lover 
might restore his fortune by a wealthier marriage. After 
the death of his wife Count Nikolai desired to marry her. 
"Not wishing to spoil her pure poetic relations with his 
family," she refused his offer but consented to look after 
his motherless children. Tolstoi remembered her among 
all those who surrounded his infancy as "the most impor- 



THE TOLSTOI FAMILY 7 

tant, a rather short, stout, dark-haired, kind, gentle, and 
sympathetic woman," who first taught him that "life was 
not a game but a serious matter. " 

After his marriage Tolstoi's father, relieved of pecuni- 
ary anxieties, and having paid off all his father's debt, 
found his chief occupation in managing his great estate 
and in litigation connected with his father's affairs. 
Tolstoi says he was not very expert in this business. He 
was diligent but lacked firmness. After his death his son 
for the first time learned that he sometimes had his serfs 
flogged or otherwise severely punished. He held aloof 
from service during the reactionary regime that preceded 
the death of Alexander I. and was intensified in the reign of 
his successor, Nicholas I. He had no relations with gov- 
ernment officials but held his head high, "never humbling 
himself before any one or varying from his lively, gay, and 
often bantering tone." 

Five children were born at Yasnaya Polyana. The 
oldest, Nikolai, whom Tolstoi' calls "a remarkable boy and 
later a remarkable man," seems to have inherited his 
admirable qualities in large measure from his mother. 
Tolstoi' says: "He lacked the chief fault required for 
authorship, he was not ambitious; he was entirely in- 
different to what men thought of him. The literary quali- 
ties that he possessed were first of all a delicate artistic 
sense, a highly developed sense of proportion, a merry and 
good-natured humor, an exuberant and inexhaustible 
imagination, a just and highly moral conception of life; 
and all this without a shadow of conceit. 

"His imagination was so vivid that he could for hours 
at a time relate ghost- stories a la Mrs. Radcliffeor amusing 
tales, and so convincingly that those who listened to him 
forgot that it was wholly invention. " 

The next youngest was Sergyei. He was handsome 
and proud, truthful and perfectly free from self-conscious- 
ness. He was always singing and drawing pictures; he 



8 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

was full of gayety, and had the power of inspiring love 
and admiration. 

Then came Dmitry, a strange and eccentric character, 
who lived a tragic life and died a tragic death, depicted 
with terrible realism in one of the most striking passages 
of " Anna Karenina. " 



II 

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS 

Ly6f (or Leo) Nikolayevitch, the youngest son, was 
born September 9 (August 28, O.S.), 1828. Fifteen 
months later a sister, Marya, was born, and then the 
mother died. She had longed for a daughter, and once 
when a nun from the Tula Convent, Marya Gerasimovna, 
who had made pilgrimages to various "Holy Places" 
dressed as a man, came there in one of her wanderings, 
the countess promised her that if by her prayers she 
would aid her to obtain her desire the child should be her 
god-daughter. The nun in her capacity of godmother 
became a frequent inmate of the Tolstoi home. The 
daughter herself afterwards became a nun, and Count 
Tolstoi in the last days of his life, a voluntarily homeless 
wanderer, came ill and foot- weary to the convent where 
she dwelt and asked for shelter. 

There was also in the household, adopted as a member 
of the family, a girl named Dunetchka Temeshova, the 
natural daughter of a wealthy bachelor friend and distant 
relative of Count Nikolai Ilyitch's, "not brilliant but 
good and simple-hearted and pure." Tolstoi's father, 
also, had a natural son who became a groom and in later 
life used to borrow or beg small sums from his half- 
brothers. 

Tolstoi says in his "Reminiscences": "The impres- 
sions of early childhood are preserved in the memory in 
some mysterious way, incomprehensible to the human 
mind; not only are they preserved, but they grow in the 
unfathomed depths of the soul like seed cast on good 
ground, and after many years suddenly they thrust their 
vernal shoots into God's world. " 



io THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Many of the characters, relatives, visitors, household 
domestics, and serfs, whom Tolstoi* brings before us in the 
picture-gallery of his descriptions are interesting as cast- 
ing a light on the Russian society of his day. Many of 
them are plainly the originals from whom he elaborated 
the personages of his stories. Still others have an impor- 
tance as influencing the development of his own mental 
and spiritual existence. This last class has the most 
importance in a biography. His mother died too early 
for him to remember her. In his semi-autobiographical 
story of " Childhood," the mother, Natalya Nikolayevna, 
is only vaguely reminiscent of his own mother. In reality 
he imagined her as "a creature so elevated, pure, and 
spiritual that often in the middle period of his life, during 
his struggle with overwhelming temptations, he used to 
pray to her soul, begging her to aid him, and he declares 
that such a prayer always helped him. 

His father died when he was only nine years old; the 
father in " Childhood" was represented by a neighboring 
landholder, A. M. Islenyef. Tolstoi in his " Recollections " 
says: "I remember him in his study where we used to 
come to say good-night to him and sometimes merely to 
play with his children. There he used to sit on a leather 
divan, with a pipe in his mouth. Sometimes he would 
caress us; sometimes, to our immense delight, he would 
let us climb up on the divan behind his back while he kept 
on reading or talking with the steward standing by the 
door, or with S. I. Yazuikof, my godfather, who often 
stayed with us. 

"I remember how he would sometimes come down- 
stairs where we were and make drawings which seemed to 
us the height of perfection, and again how he once made 
me declaim to him some lines of Pushkin's which had 
taken my fancy and which I had learned by heart: 
'To the Sea' — Proshchai, svobodnaya stikhiya — Tare- 
well, free element;' and 'To Napoleon': Chudesnui 
zhreby sovershilsa: Ugds veliki tchelovyek — 'Marvelous 



EARLY RECOLLECTIONS n 

destiny has been accomplished: the mighty man has sunk 
from sight. ' He was evidently impressed by the pathos 
with which I recited these poems, and when he had heard 
them to the end he exchanged significant glances with 
Ydzuikof, who was there. I realized that he found some 
merit in my recitation and I felt very happy. 

"I remember his merry jokes and stories at dinner and 
supper and how my grandmother and aunt and we chil- 
dren laughed as we listened to him. 

" I remember also his journeys to town and the wonder- 
fully fine appearance he had when he put on his frock- 
coat and tight-fitting trousers. 

"But I remember him chiefly in connection with hunt- 
ing — how he used to leave the house for the hunt. After- 
wards it always seemed to me that Pushkin took his 
description of the departure for the hunt in ' Count 
Nulin ' * from my father. 

"I remember how we used to go for walks with him, 
how the young greyhounds who followed gamboled 
through the unmown fields where the high grass tickled 
their bellies, how they flew round with their tails hanging 
over, and how we admired them." 

After describing how they hunted foxes and how they 
baited a big gray wolf, he continues his recollections of his 
father: — 

"My pleasantest remembrance of him is of his sitting 
with grandmother on the divan, helping her to play 
patience. My father was polite and gentle with every one, 
but to my grandmother in particular he was always 

*"Graf Nulin," a narrative poem of 375 lines, written by Aleksandr 
Sergey evitch Pushkin. Pushkin, in an autobiographical fragment, tells 
how he happened towards the end of 1825 to be in the country 7 and 
amused himself by reading " Lucrece, a rather vapid poem of Shake- 
speare's." It occurred to him that if Lucrece had given Tarquin a 
slap instead of stabbing herself, " Tarquin would have been ashamed 
and would have gone away, Lucrece would not have killed herself, 
Publicola would not have been driven mad and the world and the his- 
tory of the world would have been different." This suggested a plot for 
a poem, and he wrote it in two mornings. 



12 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

tenderly submissive. ... I remember once in the midst 
of the game and while one of my aunts was reading aloud, 
my father interrupting my aunt, pointing to the looking- 
glass and whispering something. We all look in the 
same direction. It is Tikhon the footman, who, knowing 
that my father is in the drawing-room, is stealing into the 
cabinet to take some tobacco from a big leather folding 
tobacco-pouch. My father sees him in the mirror and 
notices his figure as he steps carefully on tip-toe. My 
aunts laugh. Grandmother for a long time fails to 
understand, but when she does, she too smiles with 
amusement. I am enchanted with my father's generosity, 
and as I take leave of him I kiss with special tenderness 
his white, sinewy hand." 

Neither father nor mother, that is the ideal of that 
unknown mother, had so great an influence on his life as 
that faithful friend who took his mother's place. He says 
in his " Recollections" : "This influence consisted first in 
the fact that from earliest childhood she taught me the 
spiritual delight of love. She taught me this, but not in 
words : by her whole life she filled me with love. I saw, I 
felt how she enjoyed loving, and I learned to understand 
the joy of love. This was the first thing. Secondly, she 
taught me the delights of a calm, lonely life. " 

He devotes considerable space to the description of her 
characteristics — her kindness to the servants whom 
nevertheless she always treated as their superior, her 
habit of keeping dried figs, gingerbread and dates and 
other sweets in little dishes in her room, her skill in music 
and her unaffected piety. 

Tolstoi frequently reverts to the powerful influence 
exerted on him by his brother Nikolai. This brother 
had heard about the Freemasons and their secret rites 
and ceremonies and he had read about the Moravian 
brethren; confusing the word Moravian with the Russian 
word muravei which means ant, he invented a secret 
recipe for happiness: " There would be no diseases, no 




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EARLY RECOLLECTIONS 13 

troubles; no one would be angry with any person; all 
would love one another, all would become 'ant-breth- 
ren/ " He goes on: — 

"We even organized a game of ant-brethren. This 
consisted in our sitting down under chairs, sheltering 
ourselves with boxes, screening ourselves with handker- 
chiefs, and thus, crouching in the dark, cuddling together. 
I remember experiencing a special feeling of love and 
pathos and liking this game very much. The ant- 
brotherhood was revealed to us, but the chief secret — the 
way by which all men might cease suffering misfortune, 
might leave off quarreling and losing their temper and 
become endlessly happy — that secret he told us he had 
written on a green stick and buried it by the roadside on 
the edge of a ravine. . . . Near this stick there was the 
Fanfaronof Hill — the hill of the Boasters — up which he 
said he could take us, if only we would fulfill all the condi- 
tions appointed. These were: — first, to stand in a corner 
and not think of the white bear. I remember how I used 
to stand in a corner and try — but could not possibly 
manage — not to think of the white bear. 

"The second condition was to walk undeviatingly 
along a crack between the boards of the floor. The third 
was that for a whole year we should not see a hare, alive or 
dead or cooked, and it was obligatory on us to swear not to 
reveal these secrets to any one. He who should fulfill these 
conditions and others still more difficult which he, Niko- 
lenka, would communicate later, would have one wish 
fulfilled, whatever it might be. We had to tell our desires. 
Seryozha wanted to be able to model horses and poultry 
out of wax. Mitenka wanted to be able to draw all kinds 
of things on a large scale like an artist. I could not think 
of anything except to be able to draw small pictures. All 
this, as happens with children, was speedily forgotten, and 
none of us climbed the Fanfaronof Hill, but I remember 
the air of importance with which Nikolenka initiated us 
into these mysteries and the respect and awe which we 



i 4 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

felt at the wonderful revelations. I have kept an especi- 
ally strong impression of the Ant-brotherhood and the 
mysterious green stick destined to make all men 
happy. . . . 

"The ideal of ant-brothers lovingly cuddling together, 
though not under two arm-chairs curtained by handker- 
chiefs, but of all mankind under the wide dome of heaven, 
has remained the same for me. As I then believed that 
there existed a small green stick whereon was written the 
message that might destroy all the evil in men and give 
them universal welfare, so do I now believe that such 
truth exists and will be revealed to men and give them all 
it promises. " 

When Count Tolstoi was fifty years old he published 
some of his recollections, and one which he declared was 
the first and strongest impression of his life may perhaps 
be regarded as symbolical rather than an actual memory. 
He says that he remembered being tightly swaddled in 
bands so that he could not stretch out his arms. " Strug- 
gling in my father's hands, striving against my swaddling 
bands," — like the infant in Blake's poem. That was 
the custom of treating Russian infants at that time. 

"I only know there are two persons there. My cries 
affect them; they are agitated by my screams but will not 
unloose me as I want them to do, and I scream still 
louder. To them it seems necessary that I should be 
bound, but I know it is needless and wish to prove it to 
them and again I break forth in cries which are disagree- 
able to myself but still beyond my control. I feel the 
injustice and cruelty — not of people, for they pity me, but 
of fate and I pity myself. . . . What remains in my 
memory is not my cries or my suffering but the complexity 
and contradictoriness of the impressions. I desired free- 
dom; it would interfere with no one else, but I, needing 
strength, was weak, while they were strong. " 

He remarks how strange it was that he had no recollec- 
tion of Nature before the age of five. " All that I remem- 



EARLY RECOLLECTIONS 15 

ber happened in bed or in our rooms. Neither grass nor 
leaves nor sky nor sun existed for me. It cannot be that 
no one ever gave me flowers and leaves to play with, that I 
never saw any grass, that I was never shaded from the 
sun; but up to the time when I was five or six years old, 
I have no recollection of what is called Nature. Probably 
to see it one has to be separate from it, and I was Nature. " 

He tells also about the Russian bugaboo called Yere- 
meyevna with which his nurse or his aunt used to pretend 
to threaten the boys if they did not stop whispering after 
they had gone to bed; he recalls the German tutor Feodor 
Ivanuitch Rossel, who is introduced as Karl Ivanuitch 
Mauer in "Childhood," and who by his "honest, straight- 
forward and loving nature" had a beneficent influence on 
him; and he describes the various games and masquerades 
which took place during the holiday seasons when the 
family and the guests and the servants disguised them- 
selves and contributed to the fun. 

He found some good even in the pilgrims and half- 
crazy "saints" that wandered over Russia and sought 
shelter at the great estates. Such was Grisha in "Child- 
hood," an invented character yet representative of a 
class. "We had many of these half-crazy saints at our 
house," he says, "and I was taught to treat them with deep 
respect; and for this I am truly grateful to those who 
brought me up. If there were some among them who 
were insincere or who experienced periods of weakness 
and insincerity, yet the aim of their lives, however absurd 
they were in practice, was so lofty that I am glad that I 
learned when I was a child unconsciously to comprehend 
the loftiness of their achievements. They accomplished 
what Marcus Aurelius speaks of when he says, ( There is 
nothing higher than to endure contempt for a good life. ' 
So harmful and spontaneous is the desire for human 
glory, which always contaminates good deeds, that one 
cannot help sympathizing with the efforts not merely 
to avoid praise but even to evoke contempt." 



16 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

"Much water has flowed away since then," he con- 
tinues, "many recollections of the past have lost for me 
their meaning and become blurred fancies; the pilgrim 
Grisha himself long ago finished his last pilgrimage; but 
the impression he produced and the feeling aroused in me 
will never fade from my memory. " 

Far from the great busy world, the village of Yasnaya 
Polyana was a little community in itself, and childhood 
days spent there were the soil from which sprang the 
strangely contradictory characteristics of Tolstoi's whole 
life. 



Ill 

CHILDHOOD AT YASNAYA 

His early home, where indeed he spent the larger part 
of his life, lies about seventeen kilometers south of the 
provincial city of Tula and about three kilometers from 
the nearest railway station on the line between Moscow 
and Kursk. The extensive domain w r as surrounded by a 
brick wall and defended at the main entrance by two 
small round brick towers crumbling into ruin, but in the 
days of Tolstoi's grandfather, Prince Volkonsky, guarded 
by two armed sentries, as befitted his military rank. The 
"Prospekt, " a birch avenue, leads up to the house. The 
original manor-house with columns and balconies and 
many rooms was built of wood and was finished by Tol- 
stoi's father. It was flanked by two wings, which are still 
standing and used by the family. The mansion was 
regretfully sold by Tolstoi for the small sum of five 
thousand paper rubles at a time when he was pressed for 
money. It was removed to the neighboring estate of 
Dolgoye, where it stands neglected, its window-shutters 
nailed up. The place occupied by the house was planted 
with trees and includes a croquet-ground and the small 
terrace so famous as the open-air dining-place so fre- 
quently described by visitors to Yasnaya Polyana. 

Near the residence are flower beds and a large garden 
with fruit trees set out by Tolstoi himself, with four ponds 
and a number of lime-tree avenues. A small river flows 
through the estate. In the vicinity lies the large crown 
forest known as "Zasyeka, " so called because at the time 
of the Tartar invasion it was used as an "abattis" against 
the enemy. 

i7 



1 8 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Here Tolstoi' spent his childhood, that " splendid, 
innocent, joyous, poetic period" which he always recalled 
with delight. He was a peculiar boy — erratic, abnor- 
mally sensitive, always introspective, impulsive and stren- 
uous. The fifteenth chapter of "Childhood" begins 
with these words: — 

"Happy, happy, irrevocable period of childhood! 
How can one help loving and cherishing its memories?. 
They refresh and elevate the soul and serve as a source of 
the highest enjoyment." And after describing his sym- 
pathy for his tutor, Karl Ivanuitch, the only unhappy man 
he had then known, he continues: — 

"Will that freshness, that joyous freedom from care, 
that necessity for love and the strength of faith ever come 
back ? Can any time be better than that when the two 
greatest virtues, innocent gayety and unlimited need of 
love, are the only requirements of life ?" 

While his father was still alive, Tolstoi took his first 
lessons in riding. In his little story, "How I learned 
to Ride Horseback," he relates how, although the riding- 
master was certain that he was too small to begin and 
although he tumbled off almost immediately, yet with 
characteristic persistency he begged to be put back on 
the saddle and soon became an expert rider. Con- 
nected with this time was his first lesson in kindness 
to animals, as he relates in his little story of the de- 
crepit old horse Voronok, which he had tried to whip 
into a gallop. When his attention was drawn to its 
heaving sides, "I felt so sorry for Raven," he says, 
"that I began to kiss his sweaty neck and beg his par- 
don for having beaten him. " 

It must have been about this time that he conceived 
the notion that he could fly by sitting down on his 
heels, clasping his knees with his arms and then 
letting go. The tighter he held himself the higher 
he thought he should fly. There is no record of any 
untoward experiment in this aviation, but a few years later, 




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CHILDHOOD AT YASNAYA 19 

wishing to do something extraordinary so as to surprise 
the family, instead of coming down to dinner the usual 
way he jumped out of the second-story window and was 
picked up unconscious, though with no bones broken and 
with no serious consequences. 

In the autumn of 1836 the Tolstois went to Moscow 
for the education of the older children. Lyof was put 
under the tuition of a French tutor, Prosper St. Thomas, 
who once locked him up in a room and threatened to flog 
him for some trifling misdemeanor quite undeserving of so 
severe a punishment. Long afterwards he declared that 
the dreadful feeling of anger, indignation and disgust that 
seized upon him not only toward St. Thomas himself but 
toward the punishment which was threatened him was the 
probable cause of the horror and repulsion toward every 
kind of violence which he felt all his life. This French 
tutor saw in the boy germs of future greatness. He used 
to say, " That youngster has brains, he is a little Moliere. " 

In the summer of 1836 Tolstoi's father went to Tula to 
conduct some business and to visit a friend. He dropped 
dead of apoplexy in the street; there were even sus- 
picions that he had been poisoned; he was found with his 
pockets rifled, but somewhat later a pilgrim brought back 
to Moscow certain unnegotiable bonds that he had with 
him and delivered them to the family. His body was 
taken to Yasnaya Polyana for burial. He dropped so 
suddenly out of Tolstoi's life that the boy could not believe 
that he was dead and for a long time used to scan the 
faces of strangers in the Moscow streets, convinced that 
he might see him. Probably this fancy was strengthened 
by the grief of his grandmother, who, as he relates, " or- 
dered the door into the next room to be opened, declaring 
that she saw her son there and talked with him." In nine 
months she also died — "of a broken heart and grief. " 

The excitement of the funeral preparations and the 
mourning jackets "of black material bound with white 
braid" seem to have reconciled the children to their grand- 



2o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

mother's death, and Tolstoi recalls how interesting it was 
at the funeral to hear some gossiping female guests remark 
that they were completely orphaned. 

Their property was left for them in trust and for a 
time they were in straitened circumstances. During this 
time they were invited to a Christmas tree at the house of 
their kinsmen, the Shipofs, and were made keenly con- 
scious of their comparative insignificance when they re- 
ceived cheap wooden toys, whereas their cousins, the 
young Princes Gortchakof, nephews of the Minister of 
War, were presented with expensive ones. This outraged 
his sense of justice; by such small things are the founda- 
tions of character laid. 

The three younger children returned to Yasnaya Pol- 
yana under the care of their father's devoted friend, whom 
they called Aunt Tatyana. Their legal guardian, the 
Countess Aleksandra Osten-Saken, remained in Moscow 
with the two older boys. 

This aunt " Aline" seems to have been spiritually some- 
what akin to the thoughtful boy. She had made a bril- 
liant marriage, but her husband went insane and in jealous 
rage shot and almost killed her. As a consequence her 
child was still-born and in order not to avoid this fresh 
shock the child of a court cook was substituted and 
brought up as hers. Tolstoi well remembered Pashenka, 
who in time was informed that she was not his aunt's 
daughter. Aunt Tatyana was a devotee, and Tolstoi ab- 
sorbed many of her ideas and incorporated them in his 
system of theology. Her favorite occupation was reading 
the lives of saints and conversing with the pilgrims, monks 
and nuns that came to visit her, many of them staying at 
the house. Tolstoi says she lived a truly Christian life, 
avoiding all luxury and acceptance of service but rather 
serving others, " discharging all the functions which ac- 
cording to the prevailing custom should have been done 
by servants," and giving away all the money that she had. 
He says: "The religious feeling which filled her soul 



CHILDHOOD AT YASNAYA 21 

was evidently so important to her, so much higher than 
anything else, that she could not be angry or annoyed at 
anything, and could not attribute to worldly matters the 
importance others attached to them." 

For a few years the family spent their summers at the 
estate and their winters in Moscow. In 1840 the crops 
were so poor that in order to buy grain and feed their serfs, 
they sold a property that had come to them by inheritance. 
The horses were put on short rations and deprived of oats. 
The children, not intending to do wrong, raided the oat- 
fields of the neighboring peasants so as to bring a few 
quarts of grain to their favorite horses. 

The following autumn the Countess Osten-Saken died 
and still greater changes ensued. 

Tolstoi in his novel "Childhood" depicts a shy, rather 
morbid and self-conscious boy in an environment which 
must have been somewhat like his own. He tells how 
this boy early began to indulge in philosophic specula- 
tions, arguing that the incongruity between a person's 
position and his moral activity was the surest sign of the 
truth. He came to the conclusion that happiness did not 
depend on external circumstances but on our relations 
toward others, consequently that a person accustomed to 
bear suffering could not be unhappy. In order to culti- 
vate endurance he tells how this boy — and it was prob- 
ably himself — would hold out at arm's length a heavy 
dictionary for five minutes at a time, or would go into the 
lumber-room and practise flagellation on his bare back 
until the pain would make the tears come. 

Another characteristic anecdote shows him as a young 
Epicurean, deciding that one cannot be happy otherwise 
than by enjoying the present and letting the future take 
care of itself. " Under the influence of this thought," says 
the hero of " Childhood," "I abandoned my lessons for 
two or three days and did nothing but lie on my bed and 
enjoy myself reading a novel and eating honey cakes 
which I bought with my last money. " 



22 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

At another time he became a skeptic to such a degree 
that he was almost insane. This was probably due to a 
discovery made by a grammar school boy of about his 
own age that there was no God and that all that had been 
taught about Him was a mere invention. In " My Con- 
fession," Tolstoi says: "This was in 1838. I remem- 
ber how interested my elder brothers were in this news. 
They called me into their council and we all became ex- 
cited and accepted this as something very interesting and 
quite possible. " 

These philosophical and religious speculations, not un- 
common to thoughtful young boys, were accompanied by 
an almost morbid self-consciousness. He says : — 

"The philosophical discoveries I made greatly flattered 
my vanity: I often imagined myself a great man, expound- 
ing new truths for the benefit of mankind, and I looked on 
other mortals with a proud consciousness of my own 
dignity; yet strange to say when I came in contact with 
any of these mortals I grew timid before them. The 
higher I stood in my own opinion, the less was I able to 
show any consciousness of my own dignity before others, 
or to avoid being ashamed of every word or movement of 
my own, even the simplest. " 

If one is to regard certain passages in "Childhood" as 
autobiographical, he also became extremely sensitive about 
his personal appearance. This story tells how Nikdlenka 
Irtenyef realized that he was extremely plain, so that 
moments of despair came over him when he imagined 
that there could be no happiness on earth for a man with 
such a broad nose, such thick lips and such small gray 
eyes as he had; and he often prayed God to change him 
into a handsome boy. He felt so deeply about this that 
he would have gladly exchanged all his other advantages, 
present and to come, for a handsome face. 

Tolstoi* himself made vain efforts to improve his looks : 
— on one occasion he tried to trim his thick eyebrows and 
was inconsolable at his lack of success. 



CHILDHOOD AT YASNAYA 23 

Quite in line with this habit of mind was his desire to 
attract attention to himself. Once, when the family were 
driving from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoi ran 
ahead of the troika; when the horses put on full speed, he 
exerted himself to the utmost and was not overtaken until 
they had gone two miles. He was lifted into the carriage, 
gasping for breath and quite exhausted. He would some- 
times enter a room and placing his heels together, bow 
backwards, thus saluting each of the company in turn. 

It can be easily seen that in this as in other of his youth- 
ful acts and in his youthful speculations, the boy was the 
father of the man. He himself tells what books had a 
predominating influence over him. That of the story of 
Joseph, from the Bible, and certain Russian popular leg- 
ends, he records as " Powerful"; that of certain stories 
from the "Arabian Nights" and some of Pushkin's poems, 
notably "Napoleon," were "Great"; while that of Pogaref- 
sky's "Black Fowl" was "Very great." As a scholar he 
was not very diligent. One of his tutors declared that his 
brother Sergyei' both wished and was able to learn; Dmitry 
wished but was unable to learn, but Lyof neither wished 
nor was able; and Tolstoi commented on this as being 
"Perfectly true." 

In those days he was captivated by the nine-year-old 
daughter of his father's friend Islenyef. His brother-in- 
law relates an amusing story of this attachment: "My 
mother related to me that in describing his first love in 
his book 'Childhood' he omitted to say that, being jealous, 
he pushed the object of his love off the terrace. This was 
my mother, nine years old, and in consequence she had to 
limp for a long time afterwards. He did this because she 
was not talking to him but to some one else. Later on, 
she used to laugh and say to him: 'Evidently you 
pushed me off the terrace in my childhood that you might 
later marry my daughter!' " 



IV 

SCHOOL-DAYS IN KAZAN 

Tolstoi had another aunt, Pelageya Uyinishna Yiish- 
kova, the wife of a landed proprietor who lived in the city 
of Kazan, near the Volga River, at the gateway of the East, 
four hundred and sixty miles from Moscow. Her hus- 
band, V, I. Yushkof, had once offered himself to Aunt 
Tatyana but had been refused. Consequently the two 
ladies were not on friendly terms. After the Countess 
Osten-Saken's death her sister came from Kazan to Mos- 
cow and there relieved the disconsolate Tatyana of all care 
of the Tolstoi orphans. According to the story she par- 
tially dismantled Yasnaya Polyana, carrying off furniture 
and everything else that was portable, together with all 
the servants, carpenters, tailors, locksmiths, chefs, up- 
holsterers and the other serfs trained to various trades. 

To each of the four brothers was assigned a serf as a 
body-servant — "a silly idea" of his aunt's. Tolstoi's 
afterwards accompanied him — the Vanyushka of "The 
Cossacks" — to the Caucasus and lived with him until 
old age. The journey must have been a continual picnic 
to the lively lads — Lyof was only twelve at the time. 
They camped in the fields or in the woods; when they 
came to water they bathed, and they feasted on the mush- 
rooms that are so dear to the Russian palate. 

Kazan is one of the most interesting cities of Russia. 
From its quays ships descend the mighty Volga to the 
Caspian. It was the mart for caravans bound to or from 
Bokhara and the other cities of Persia or India. It had 
river communication with Nizhni Novgorod or Lower 
Newtown, where the great annual fairs are held, and even 
with Moscow, the city of the "sorok sorokof " of churches. 

24 



SCHOOL-DAYS IN KAZAN 25 

Its University was founded in 1803. Tolstoi's oldest 
brother Nikolai" was transferred from the University of 
Moscow to that of Kazan, and the two other brothers in 
turn entered the same faculty — that of Philosophy. Lyof 
studied in the city gymnasium, and as the Arabic and 
Turko-Turanian languages were taught in that prepara- 
tory school, he determined to enter the Faculty of Orien- 
tal languages — a particularly difficult course. 

When, in his sixteenth year, he presented himself for 
examination for the University he got the highest possible 
marks in French, excellent marks in German, Arabic and 
the Tartar languages, fairly satisfactory marks in Eng- 
lish, Mathematics, Russian Literature and Logic, but 
failed completely in Latin and Geography. Tolstoi 
says that when he was asked by the curator Pushkin, a 
man favorably disposed, to name the seaports of France, 
he " could not name a single one. " Consequently he was 
not admitted to the University; but the following autumn 
he was granted a second supplementary examination and 
one can read now in the archives of the University that 
Tolstoi was admitted "as an extern student in the depart- 
ment of Turko- Arabic Literature. " 

During these years, the summers were still spent at 
Yasnaya Polyana, amid the healthful surroundings of 
country life. The rest of the year they lived at their aunt's 
home at Kazan. She was, to use Tolstoi's own words, 
"a very kind and pious person, pious after the fashion of 
her time, performing assiduously all the rites of the 
Church, without being conscious of any special duty 
toward her fellow-men or any necessity of a change of char- 
acter on her part." She was superficial and gay, and 
Tolstoi has left it on record that she thought it a good plan 
for a young man to form a liaison with a married woman, 
" as that gave a man a necessary experience. " He appar- 
ently had abundant opportunity, for he found himself, as a 
student of the University and a young man of rank, in the 
midst of all sorts of gayeties, — balls, masquerades, con- 



26 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

certs, tableaux-vivants and private theatricals. At the 
time of the Carnival in the winter of 1845 he and his 
brother Sergyei' acted in two plays given in behalf of some 
charity, and his performance was a success. After he had 
become famous, persons who remembered him as a stu- 
dent told how he was present at all the balls given by the 
Governor of Kazan and by the Marshal of the Nobility 
and other aristocratic parties, how he was everywhere a 
welcome guest but distinguished by "a strange awkward- 
ness and timidity. " This was due to self-consciousness, 
and the self-consciousness arose from his lack of good 
looks. Frequent mention is made of such remarks in 
both " Childhood" and "Boyhood." The first chapter 
of "Youth" is probably quite autobiographical. It re- 
fers to the time when he entered the University: — 

"Not only was I convinced that my appearance was 
plain, but I was unable to solace myself with the usual 
reflections: I could not say that my face was expressive, 
intellectual and noble. There was nothing expressive 
about it; the features were of the coarsest, homeliest and 
most ordinary description. My small gray eyes were 
stupid, particularly when I looked into the mirror, rather 
than intelligent. There was still less of manliness about 
me. Though I was not so very diminutive in stature and 
was strong for my age, all my features were soft, flabby 
and unformed. There was nothing aristocratic about 
them; on the contrary my face was exactly like a common 
muzhik's, and I had just such big hands and feet; and all 
this seemed to me at that time particularly disgraceful. " 

In the same book he tells how Nikolai Irtenyef feels a 
sense of gratified vanity at wearing his new University 
uniform — the coat of glossy black cloth and the brilliant 
gilt buttons, the sword in his belt and the cockade in 
his hat, and he tells how he fits himself out with pipe and 
tobacco and takes his first lesson in smoking, which ends as 
unhappily as his examination in geography, and how he 
begins to drink champagne and almost has a duel; how he 



? 




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SCHOOL-DAYS IN KAZAN 27 

is affected by the various young ladies whom he meets 
and under their influence takes up the study of music 
more zealously than ever, and he tells how he fails in his 
examinations and is humiliated in the eyes of those whom 
he had affected to despise. 

There are hints at excursions into darker phases of 
life. Indeed, in "My Confession'' he unsparingly con- 
demns himself, but probably with that natural exaggera- 
tion which almost always accompanies public confession 
and is really a form of conceit — as where the saints call 
themselves the vilest of sinners. They would resent it if 
other people called them so. 

Commenting on these experiences which a fellow- 
student remarked must have been demoralizing and repel- 
lent to him, Tolstoi in a manuscript note wrote that he 
felt no repulsion but was very glad to enjoy himself in 
Kazan society, which was at that time very good, and he 
quite resented the statement that Zagoskin was amazed at 
his moral power displayed in overcoming the temptations 
that abounded in "the detestable surroundings" of his 
life. On the contrary he says, "he was thankful to Fate 
that he had passed his early youth in a place where a 
young man could be young without involving himself in 
problems beyond his grasp, and that he lived a life which 
though idle and luxurious was still not evil. " 

In spite of all his gayeties he declared that he had not 
missed a single lecture and knew the history of Russia 
quite well, and also knew the German language incompar- 
ably better than any other student in his division. 

Instead of repeating the first year's course in Oriental 
languages, he got permission to enter the faculty of Law; 
but here again the gayeties of life in Kazan interfered with 
his studies. Only toward the end of the year did he take 
up serious work and find some pleasure in it. He al- 
ways recalled being interested in Comparative Jurispru- 
dence and Criminal Law and in some of the discussion 
arranged by the German Professor Vogel, particularly on 



28 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

capital punishment; and he was greatly absorbed in a 
comparison between Montesquieu's " Esprit des Lois" 
and the Veliki Nakdz or Code of the Empress Kath- 
arine. 

This study convinced him that Katharine got more fame 
than Russia good from that compilation. His study on 
this subject was the indirect cause of his leaving the Uni- 
versity, for he says it opened out to him a new sphere of 
independent mental work, whereas the University with 
its demands, far from aiding such work, only hindered it. 

He was evidently not very well satisfied with student 
life. During his second year's course he was put under 
lock and key for the small offense of being tardy at a 
recitation, and his fellow-culprit, Nazaryef, recalls how 
during their imprisonment he attacked history as the 
dullest and least useful of all subjects. He declared that 
it was nothing but a collection of fables and useless details, 
sprinkled with a quantity of unnecessary dates and proper 
names. Here, again, we seem to hear the very voice of 
the Tolstoi of later days. 

At the final examinations of 1846 he had received the 
highest mark in History, but how ? A fellow-student had 
challenged him in a test as to which had the better mem- 
ory and Tolstoi learned by heart the life of Mazeppa. It 
chanced that he drew that question at the examination 
and so received a five. Such experiences tend to make 
men despise examinations and their results. Degrees 
built on a gamble deceive their recipients least of all. 

Nazaryef cites Tolstoi as saying: — 

" We both have the right to expect to leave this ' temple 
of knowledge' as useful men equipped with information. 
What shall we carry from the University ? Think a little 
and let your conscience answer. What shall we take from 
this temple when we return home to the country ? What 
shall we be able to do ? To whom shall we be useful ?" 

The teaching at the Kazan University was undoubtedly 
dry and pedantic; the lectures by incompetent professors 



SCHOOL-DAYS IX KAZAN 29 

exasperatingly stupid; the examinations notoriously un- 
fair. The plan was maturing in his mind to quit so 
barren a field. Years afterwards, when asked why he did 
not take his degree, he replied: — 

"I was little interested in the lectures given by our pro- 
fessors at Kazan. I first worked for a year at Oriental 
languages but with small success, though I threw myself 
enthusiastically into what I did. I read innumerable 
books, but all of one and the same tendency. When any 
subject interested me, I deviated from it in no respect and 
I tried to become acquainted with everything that might 
throw light on it. " 

Another reason which he gave was the fact that his 
brother Sergyei had finished his course and was about to 
go from Kazan. The three brothers w r ere at this time out 
of their aunt's house and living together in a suite of five 
rooms which they rented. Judging from Tolstoi's ac- 
count of his brothers, especially of Dmitry, it must have 
been an odd menage. Dmitry had a room to himself; it 
had no ornaments except a case of minerals; he cared 
nothing for society; he was hot-tempered and careless of 
dress. The other two consorted only with aristocratic 
companions and dressed in the height of fashion. They 
drank and gambled and, according to the early diaries 
that Tolstoi' kept, he was guilty before his own conscience 
of other misdemeanors. At this time, associating as he did 
with those of his own rank in life, he was inclined to look 
down on others who did not speak French with a correct 
accent or w T ho failed to have carefully manicured finger- 
nails. As for the common people, he says they did not 
exist — he disregarded them entirely. Afterwards he felt 
that it was a terrible waste of time to have absorbed these 
false and disastrous ideas. That he succeeded is proved 
by the statement of Xazaryef, who thought him full of 
self-importance and conceit. 



THE BENEVOLENT YOUNG PROPRIETOR 

In March, 1847, he had an attack of illness, and while at 
the hospital he had time to think of the significance of 
reason and came to the conclusion a that it must be in 
harmony with the world, with the universe, so that by 
studying its laws one may become independent of the past 
and of the world. " Soon after this he petitioned the rec- 
tor of the University to have his name taken off the books. 
His plea was based on ill-health and family affairs, but 
this was only an excuse: he wished to be free from a false 
position. He says : — 

" I honestly desired to make myself a good and virtuous 
man; but I was young, I had passions and I stood alone in 
my search after virtue. Every time I tried to express 
the longings of my heart for a truly virtuous life, I was 
met with contempt and derisive laughter, but as soon as I 
gave way to the lowest of my passions I was praised and 
encouraged. I found ambition, love of power, love of 
gain, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance, held in high 
esteem." 

In March, 1847, he entered in his diary six rules which 
he meant to follow. They were designed to stimulate 
him to carry out self-imposed tasks in spite of all obstacles 
and to do this well, to compel his mind to work with its 
utmost power and to rid himself of interruptions by 
thoughtless friends. 

The following month, as the time for his departure drew 
near, he wrote: " A change must take place in my way of 
life, but this change must be conditioned by the soul and 
not by external circumstances;" and, recognizing that 

3° 



THE YOUNG PROPRIETOR 31 

"life is the conscious aspiration toward the many-sided 
development of everything in existence, he laid down a 
broad program for the next two years, which he proposed 
to spend at Yasnaya Polyana, that estate having in the 
division of his father's property fallen to his share: — 

" (1) To study the whole course of law necessary for 
the final University examination. (2) To study practical 
medicine and a part of its theory. (3) To study the 
French, Russian, German, English, Italian, and Latin 
languages. (4) To study agriculture, both theoretically 
and practically. (5) To study history, geography, and 
statistics. (6) To study mathematics, gymnasium course. 
(7) To write my university essay. (8) To attain the 
highest possible perfection in music and painting. (9) 
To write down the rules of conduct. (10) To acquire 
some knowledge of the natural sciences. And (n) to 
compose essays on all the subjects I shall study. " 

Having made up his mind, his characteristic impatience 
forbade him to wait. His friend Zagoskin describes the 
scene in the rooms of the Counts Tolstoi as he prepared 
to take his departure: "All present, in accordance with 
the custom, drank the traveler's health and wished him 
every good fortune. They accompanied him to the ferry 
across the Kazanka River, which was then in freshet, and 
for the last time the friends exchanged the farewell 
kisses." . . . Read the beginning of "The Cossacks" 
and you see the scene reproduced. 

Another story which naturally grew out of his experi- 
ences in quitting the University and devoting himself to 
the care of his estate and the management of his serfs is 
entitled "A Proprietor's Morning." This is the story of 
a failure, and it is autobiographical in spirit if not in fact. 
The young Prince Nekhlyudof writes to his aunt, who of 
course corresponds to Pelageya Yushkova, just such a 
letter as Tolstoi might have written : — 

"I leave the University in order to devote myself to a 
country life, because I feel that I was born for it. For 



32 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

God's sake, dear aunt, do not ridicule me. You say that 
I am young. Perhaps I am still scarcely more than a boy; 
but this does not prevent me from feeling certain of my 
vocation, from wishing to accomplish it successfully and 
from loving it. ... I found our affairs in indescribable 
confusion. Wishing to bring order out of chaos, I made 
an investigation and discovered that the principal trouble 
was due to the wretched, miserable condition of the peas- 
ants and that this trouble could be remedied only by work 
and by patience. ... Is it not my sacred and evi- 
dent obligation to labor for the welfare of these seven 
hundred human beings for whom I must be responsible to 
God?" 

Tolstoi's aunt, as he himself says, wished him to be- 
come an adjutant to the Emperor; and if in addition to 
that he should marry a wealthy woman with an 
enormous number of serfs, her cup of happiness would 
be full. Prince Nekhlyudof writes his aunt: "I feel 
that I am capable of being a good landlord, and in 
order to be one as I understand the word to mean, I do 
not need my diploma as £ candidate' or the rank which 
you expect of me. Dear aunt, do not form ambitious 
plans about me; accustom yourself to the idea that I am 
going on an absolutely peculiar path, but one that is good, 
and which will I think bring me to happiness. " 

According to the story Nekhlyudof 's aunt, the countess, 
writes him, predicting his failure and declaring that his 
" originality is nothing but morbidly developed egotism." 

Tolstoi soon found that his attempts to ameliorate the 
condition of the serfs were received with suspicion and 
mistrust. They preferred the filthy " nests" where they 
had lived so long and to which they were accustomed. 
Neatness and improved sanitary arrangements were a 
nuisance to them. The primitive wooden sokhd, which 
only scratched the surface of the soil, was preferable to 
afcfe^ modern iron plow. It was a strange spectacle for 
tft&i to see the bar in working with them, and they lost 



THE YOUNG PROPRIETOR 33 

respect for him. Neither did he succeed in interesting 
them in his schools, where he himself, knowing little, tried 
experiments in teaching. Such is human nature. Civili- 
zation cannot be inoculated; it does not become second 
nature in a day. It was a hopeless experiment from the 
first, and the worldly-minded aunt was able to say, " I told 
you so." 

But however great the failure may have been in its 
practical effects on conditions at Yasnaya Polyana, it 
enriched his life with many precious memories — of racy 
conversations, of personal characteristics, of simple rustic 
comedies and tragedies, which he afterwards embodied in 
his masterpieces of fiction. 

Under the influence of Rousseau, all of whose w r orks he 
read and whose picture he thought of wearing, as if it 
were a saint's, he began to look upon his serfs as his kins- 
men. He had a passionate desire to better their condi- 
tion; but they, accustomed for generations to servility and 
to squalid lives, naturally looked with suspicion on his 
condescension and his sanitary improvements. He 
quickly came up against that passive resistance w T hich is 
one of the most difficult modes of opposition. He also 
found his new theories at odds with the temptations of life. 

At Yasnaya Polyana he found time for much reading, 
and he grades in his diary the influence which the books 
he devoured had on his life. Some of Gogol's short stories 
and Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" were marked 
"Great." Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," Pushkin's 
narrative poem "Yevgeny Onyegin," Schiller's "Rob- 
bers," Rousseau's "Nouvelle Heloise," Turgenief's 
"Memoirs of a Sportsman" and novels by Druzhinin 
and Grigorovitch and Lermontof were "Very great"; 
while Rousseau's "Confession" and "Emile," Dickens's 
"David Copperfield," and the Gospel of Matthew, es- 
pecially the Sermon on the Mount, were "Powerful." 
In his diary he noted his aspirations and his failures in 
attaining his ideal. 



34 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

In 1848, although he had found it very pleasant living 
in the country with his Aunt Yargolskaya, he was im- 
pelled by what he called afterwards "a vain thirst for 
knowledge" to repair to Petersburg. It must have 
been a sudden resolution, for he says he went to pass his 
examinations as a candidate at the University there 
" knowing literally nothing" and having taken only one 
week for preparation. After sleepless nights he passed his 
examination in civil and criminal law. But even then he 
did not know what to do. He realized that two roads 
were open to him: one was to enter the army and take 
part in helping crush the Hungarian revolution of that 
fateful year; the other was to finish his university studies 
and get a post as a Government official. 

The curious vacillation of his ideas is plainly shown in 
his letters to his brother Sergyei'. In the first one he tells 
him that he has determined to stay at Petersburg forever: 
if he should not pass his examinations he would begin 
service even as low as in the fourteenth class. Petersburg 
life, he said, had a great and good influence on him, ac- 
customing him to activity: every one about him was busy; 
it was impossible to find a man idle enough to share in a 
disorderly life. He had come to the conclusion that one 
could not live by abstract speculation and philosophy, 
that it was necessary to be practical. "That," he said, 
" was a great step forward and a great change, and there 
was no other place in Russia where it was so good to live 
and be young." 

But it did not take him long to be again disillusioned. 
Instead of Petersburg's being an inexpensive place to live 
in, without any opportunity to be frivolous, he discovered 
that it was a very maelstrom of dissipations. He wrote 
his brother: "God knows what I have been up to! I 
went to Petersburg without any reason; there I have 
done nothing useful, only spent a pile of money and got 
into debt. Stupid! Insufferably stupid! You can't 
believe how it torments me. Above all, the debts, which 



THE YOUNG PROPRIETOR 35 

I must pay and as quickly as possible, because if I do not 
soon pay them, I shall, besides the money, lose my reputa- 
tion too." Then, after asking his brother not to tell on him 
but to sell the estate of Vorotuinko, his last resource ! he 
says: "Before I get my next year's income I absolutely 
require 3,500 rubles: 1,200 for the Guardians' Council, 
1,600 to pay my debts, 700 for my current expenses. I 
know you will groan — but what is to be done? Men 
commit such stupidity once in a lifetime. I had to pay 
for my freedom (there was no one to thrash me, that was 
my chief misfortune) and for philosophy, and so I had 
to pay for it. Be so kind as to arrange to get me out 
of the false and odious position in which I now am, 
without a grosh of money at my disposal and in debt all 
round. . . . 

" God grant I may mend my ways and sometime be- 
come a respectable man; more than all I rely upon the 
service as a volunteer, it will teach me practical life." 

These were only the plans of a man conscious of his 
weaknesses and in despair at the growing debts. A few 
days later he wrote his brother that his last letter con- 
tained a lot of nonsense : his notion of entering the Horse 
Guards was now held up as possible only in case he failed 
to pass his examinations and the war proved to be suffi- 
ciently serious. The war certainly did not prove serious 
to him at least, and he made no further attempt to get a 
degree from the University. 

When he returned to his estate that spring he brought 
with him a German musician by the name of Rudolf and 
with him learned to like the classic music of Bach, Gluck, 
and Beethoven. His Aunt Tatyana, who had been an 
excellent pianist in her youth, again took up the art and 
played duets with him, often surprising him by the excel- 
lence of her technique. His pleasure-loving brother 
Sergyei came, bringing a band of gypsy musicians — 
dancers, singers, and performers. There was much 
drinking and gayety — a dangerous element not only for 



36 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Tolstoi but also for poor Rudolf, who was inclined to be a 
drunkard. Tolstoi depicts his character in the masterly 
short story " Albert, 5 ' written some years later. 

Meantime what had become of all his good resolutions ? 
His nature was so impulsive that he was constantly break- 
ing them and as constantly repenting. Now in his diary 
he would lay out a definite plan of action. Then he would 
write, "I am living a completely brutish life, though not 
an utterly disorderly one. I have abandoned almost all 
my occupations and have greatly fallen in spirit. " 

In another entry in his diary he sums up the causes of 
his failures: — 

6 (i) Irresolution, i.e. want of energy. 
" (2) Self-deception. 
"(3) Haste. 
" (4) Fausse-honte. 
" (5) A bad frame of mind. 
"(6) Instability. 
" (7) The habit of imitation. 
"(8) Fickleness. 
"(9) Thoughtlessness." 

He spent some time in Moscow and from there he wrote 
more cheerful letters to his aunt, who was evidently 
troubled lest he might fall under evil influences, especially 
that of Islenyef, the uncle of his future wife. In one he 
describes his environment : — 

" My quarters consist of four rooms — a dining-room, 
where I already have a grand piano which I have hired; 
a drawing-room furnished with a red-cloth divan, arm- 
chairs, and walnut tables and decorated with three large 
mirrors; a library where I have my writing-table, desk, 
and divan — which always reminds me of our disputes 
about this last piece of furniture; and still another room 
big enough to be both bedroom and dressing-room, and 
besides all this a small anteroom. 

"I dine at home on shchi and kasha, with which I am 



THE YOUNG PROPRIETOR 37 

quite content. I am only waiting for the preserves and 
home-made wines (yarenye and nalivka) in order to 
have everything in accordance with my country habits. 

"For forty rubles I have bought a sleigh of a style which 
is now very fashionable — Sergyei must know the kind. I 
have bought that whole outfit; everything just now is very 
stylish." 

He wrote her that she must not worry about Islenyef, 
who was not in Moscow, and he so far agreed with her on 
the subject of gambling that he thought he should not 
play any more. He ended by saying that he felt he 
deserved her praise for the way he had behaved. "I am 
satisfied with myself, " he added. 

He was in Moscow until 1851. One of his objects 
being, as he confided to his diary, to play cards, to get 
married, and to secure an official position. 

Card-playing evidently involved him only the deeper in 
pecuniary difficulties, and they at that time must have 
been very troublesome, for he had even thought of trying 
to earn money by taking the contract to conduct the post- 
station at Tula. 

Marriage was an impossibility because the three ele- 
ments that he felt were necessary — love, reason and fate — 
were lacking. And he could not secure an official position, 
because th? red tape which has always been the bane of a 
bureaucracy required of him various papers which he 
could not furnish. 

Still, on the whole, he felt that he was morally less cul- 
pable than during the three years before — those years 
which he considered the wildest and most unprofitable of 
his life. He wrote his aunt: "In comparison with past 
winters, the last is without doubt the pleasantest and 
most rational I have passed. I have amused myself, 
have gone out into society, have laid up pleasant im- 
pressions, and, at the same time, have not deranged my 
finances, though, it is true, neither have I settled them. " 

About this time his brother Nikolai, who had been serv- 



38 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

ing as an artillery officer with the army in the Caucasus, 
came back to Russia. This was an agreeable surprise to 
him. He wrote his aunt that he was so glad to see him — 
he had neglected his duties or rather his habits. He told 
her that he planned to make a visit at Yasnaya Polyana 
and if possible keep Nikolai with him there for a few 
months, and then go with him for a tour in the Caucasus. 



VI 

A FLIGHT TO THE CAUCASUS 

Tolstoi was now twenty-three. He was quite inde- 
pendent. He had seen the seamy side of high society. 
Gambling, deep drinking, and loose relations with women 
were scarcely regarded as disgraceful at that day. The 
wealthy, supported by serf labor, lived in comparative 
idleness. There was no career in politics. Officialdom 
was rife with graft. When Tolstoi's brother Dmitry gave 
himself up to an ascetic life, he was ridiculed; and when he 
entered the civil service and asked for a place where he 
could be useful, it caused nothing but astonishment. 
Service of the State was regarded by every one as a means 
of satisfying ambition and procuring means to pay gam- 
bling debts. 

That Tolstoi made his way through such moral tangles 
was due to that spur of conscience which never allowed 
him to rest. The books that he best liked, the friends 
and relatives whose characters seemed to him best worthy 
of emulation, contributed to hold high the ideal, so that 
it was ever before his eyes, even when he stumbled in 
pressing forward to attainment. 

Tolstoi's vain efforts to start a school for his peasants, 
to induce them to live in sanitary conditions, his struggles 
with his own vacillations, his winter-periods of wild or- 
gies followed by spring-repentances, his uncertainty as to 
what should be his career, made him most restless and 
unhappy. He was ready for any kind of a change. On 
one occasion his sister's husband was about starting for 
Siberia on private business. As he left the house Tolstoi', 
dressed in his blouse and without any hat, jumped into 

39 



4 o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

the tarantds and was for accompanying him without fur- 
ther preparation. He was also drawn to literature. He 
planned a novel of gypsy life, and under the influence of 
Sterne's " Sentimental Journey" he actually began writ- 
ing a book which should describe the chance people that 
fell under his observation: the passing constable — "Who 
is he and what is his life?" — the man in the carriage — 
"Where is he going and what is he thinking about?" — 
the family in yonder house — "What is their inner life?" 

From all this uncertainty he was rescued for a time at 
least by the Caucasus. The mountainous regions of the 
Caucasus, divided into various principalities — Circassia, 
Mingrelia, Gruzia, — each inhabited by warlike tribes of 
Mohammedans and formerly governed by rival princes, 
had come either by conquest or by treaty into the nominal 
possession of Russia. But the wild Tartar tribes were 
still hostile under the masterly leadership of the Sufi 
Mollah Shamyl; and the Russian forces, stationed in pali- 
saded forts along the left bank of the Terek River, con- 
tented themselves for many years with making raids 
against the native auls, destroying their pastures, driving 
away their cattle, capturing their inhabitants and in 
turn defending themselves from surprises and reprisals. 
This guerilla warfare was still in vogue in the early fifties. 

Tolstoi put his estate into the hands of his brother-in- 
law, who agreed to pay his debts, including one of four 
thousand rubles to a neighbor with whom he had stayed 
too long at the card table. He was to have an allowance 
of five hundred rubles a year, and he contracted not to 
gamble any more. 

On the second of May he left Yasnaya Polyana. 
In the " Stories of My Dogs" he says that he had a black 
bulldog of truculent appearance but of really gentle dis- 
position. He had reared him from a puppy. " When I 
went to the Caucasus, I did not care to take him with me 
and I went away quietly, giving orders to keep him 
chained up. At the first post-station, when I was about to 




Count L. N. Tolstoi. 

From a daguerreotype, 1851. 



A FLIGHT TO THE CAUCASUS 41 

start with a fresh team, suddenly I saw something black 
and bright dashing along the road. • It was Bulka in his 
brass collar. He was flying with all his might toward the 
station. He leaped on me, licked my hand, and then 
stretched himself out in the shadow of the telyega. . . . 
I learned afterward that when he discovered that I had 
gone, he broke his chain, jumped out of the window and 
dashed over the road on my trail and had thus run twenty 
versts in the heat of the day." 

Tolstoi, moved by such devotion, took him to the 
Caucasus, where after many exciting adventures with 
pheasants, wolves, bears, and wild boars, he at last went 
mad from the bite of a wolf and went off by himself to die. 

Tolstoi spent two days in Moscow. In one of his many 
letters to his Aunt Tatyana he tells of taking part in a 
festivity at the gay suburb of Sokolniki, and therefore he 
did not meet one of the ladies whom he wanted to see; 
nor was he tempted by the gypsy women: "I came out 
victorious," he wrote, " having given nothing but my bene- 
diction to the lively descendants of the famous Pharaohs. " 
In the same letter, speaking of his brother, he says : — 

" Nicolas finds me a very agreeable traveling-compan- 
ion except for my cleanliness. He is vexed because, as he 
says, I change my linen a dozen times a day. I on my 
part should consider him a very agreeable companion if it 
were not for his lack of cleanliness. I know not which of 
us is right. " 

A few weeks later, at Kazan, where they made their 
relatives a week's visit, Tolstoi again manifested the same 
over-regard for externals. He and his brother were walk- 
ing about town when a man drove by, leaning his ungloved 
hands on a stick. Tolstoi made some derogatory remark 
which by its snobbishness caused Nikolai to look at him 
"with his hardly noticeable, kind, clever, and mocking 
smile," and ask why a man should be despised for not 
wearing gloves. The mountains of the Caucasus asked 
him similar questions. 



42 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

At the Institute of Kazan, Tolstoi met a former pupil 
and promptly fell in love with her, but he was not sure of 
himself and it soon became only a pleasant memory. At 
the country estate of the Yushkof family he and a young 
lawyer, the procurator Ogolfn, made a wager as to which 
should climb the highest in a grove of young birch trees. 
Tolstoi was much amused at Yushkof s surprise to see 
an official engaged in such a frivolous amusement. It 
was to him a new type. 

Nikolai, who liked to show his independence, proceeded 
to the Caucasus by an unusual route. They went by 
tarantds to Saratof on the Volga; then they hired a boat 
large enough to take their equipage on board and with a 
crew of three men they rowed, floated and sailed down 
the river to Astrakhan — "a poetical and charming trip" 
of more than a fortnight. 

Count Nikolai Tolstoi's battery was stationed at the 
Cossack stanitsa of Starogladovsk, and they were obliged 
to travel about four hundred versts by post-carriage from 
Astrakhan. Tolstoi was at first disappointed in the 
beauty of the Caucasus and in the society into which he 
was thrown. This is seen in the letter which he wrote to 
his aunt soon after his arrival at Stary Yurt. It is full 
of characteristic touches: — 

"I have arrived alive and well but now (at Starogla- 
dovsk) am feeling rather sad. I have here seen at close 
quarters the kind of life Nikolai leads, and I have made the 
acquaintance of the officers who form the society. The 
kind of life led here (as it has at first presented itself to 
me) is not very attractive, for the country, which I had 
expected to find very fine, is not at all so. As the 
stanitsa is situated on low land there is no fine view, and 
besides the lodgings are bad, as well as everything that 
constitutes the comfort of life. The officers are, as you 
can imagine, men without education, but at the same time 
are very good fellows and very much attached to Nikolai. 

" Alekseyef, the commander, is a little chap, with light 



A FLIGHT TO THE CAUCASUS 43 

hair approaching red, with mustaches and whiskers, and 
a piercing voice, but an excellent Christian, somewhat 
reminding one of Volkof, but not canting like him. Then 
D , a young officer, childish and good-natured, re- 
minding one of Petrusha. Then an old captain, Bilkov- 
sky, of the Ural Cossacks, an old soldier, simple but noble, 
brave and good. I will confess to you that at first many 
things in this society shocked me, but I have become 
accustomed to it, without, however, becoming intimate 
with the gentlemen. I have found a happy medium in 
which there is neither pride nor familiarity. In this, 
however, I had merely to follow Nikolai's example." 

Within a week after their arrival Nikolai was ordered to 
the hot springs, Goryatchev6dsk, where there were fine 
views, and Tolstoi followed him. What effect the first 
sight of the mountains had upon him is reflected in a 
beautiful passage from his novel "The Cossacks": — 

"About evening," says the story, "the Nagyets driver 
pointed with his w T hip toward what he said were the 
mountains. Olyenin eagerly tried to strain his sight, but 
it was hazy and the clouds half concealed the mountains. 
It seemed to Olyenin that there was something gray, 
white and curly, but in spite of all his efforts he could find 
nothing beautiful in the view of the mountains of which he 
had read and heard so much. He thought that the 
mountains and the clouds looked exactly alike and that 
the peculiar beauty of the snow-capped mountains, 
whereof he had been told, was a fiction like the music of 
Bach and love for women in which he did not believe, and 
he ceased to have any expectations about the moun- 
tains. 

" B ut the next day early in the morning he was awakened 
by the coolness in his post-carriage and glanced out indif- 
ferently. The morning was extraordinarily clear. Sud- 
denly he saw twenty steps distant from him, as it seemed 
to him at first, the pure white mountain masses with then- 
tender outlines and the fantastic, clear-cut aerial line of 



44 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

their peaks against the distant sky. And when he 
realized the great distance between him and the moun- 
tains and the sky, all the majesty of the mountains, and 
when he began to realize all the endlessness of that 
beauty, he was terrified lest it were an illusion, a 
dream. He shook himself so as to awake. But the 
mountains were still the same. 

"'What is that? Tell me what that is,' he said to 
his driver. 

" ' Oh, it's the mountains, ' replied the Nagyets indiffer- 
ently. 

" ' And I too have been looking at them this long time, ' 
said Vanyushka the groom — 'aren't they splendid ? They 
won't believe me at home!' 

"As the troika flew swiftly along over the level road, the 
mountains seemed to run along the horizon, their rosy 
summits shining in the rising sun. The mountains 
aroused in Olyenin's mind first a sentiment of wonder, 
then of delight; but afterward, as he gazed at this chain 
of snow-capped mountains, not piled upon other dark 
mountains but growing and rising straight out of the 
steppe, little by little he began to fathom all their beauty 
and he felt the mountains. From that moment all that 
he had seen, all that he had thought, all that he had felt, 
assumed for him the new, sternly majestic character of 
the mountains. All his recollections of Moscow, his 
shame and his repentance, all his trivial dreams about the 
Caucasus, disappeared and never returned again. 

"'This is the beginning,' seemed to be whispered into 
his ear by some solemn voice. And the road and the out- 
line of the distant Terek now beginning to appear and the 
forts and the people — all seemed to him no longer insig- 
nificant. He looks at the sky and remembers the moun- 
tains. He looks at himself, at Vanyushka, and again — the 
mountains. Here come two Cossacks on horseback, 
their sheathed muskets balanced behind their backs and 
their horses galloping along with their brown and gray 



A FLIGHT TO THE CAUCASUS 45 

legs; but the mountains! . . . Beyond the Terek he 
sees smoke rising from a native village; but the moun- 
tains! . . . The sun rises and gleams along the Terek 
lined with reeds; but the mountains! . . . From the 
fort comes a native cart; handsome women, young women 
ride in it, but the mountains! . . . Abreks gallop across 
the steppe and I am coming, I fear them not, I have arms 
and strength and youth; but the mountains !'" . . . 

The purification of spirit did not come to Tolstoi im- 
mediately any more than it did to Olyenin. He was still 
to fall into the old temptations, but the leaven of righteous- 
ness was working, as can be seen by passages from his 
diary. Thus he wrote on the twenty-third of June: — 

" Last night I hardly slept at all. After writing in my 
diary, I began to pray to God. It is impossible to convey 
the sweetness of the feeling which I experienced during 
prayer. I repeated the prayers I generally say: 'Our 
Father', 'to the Virgin/ 'to the Trinity/ 'the gates of mercy/ 
'the appeal to the guardian angel/ and then I still remained 
in prayer. If one defines prayer as a petition or as thanks- 
giving, then I did not pray. I longed for something sub- 
lime and good, but what I cannot express, although I 
was clearly conscious that I desired it. I wished to be- 
come one with the Universal Being. I asked Him to 
pardon my sins; yet no, I did not ask that, for I felt that by 
giving me this blissful moment. He had pardoned me/' 

And so it goes like the monologue of a St. Jerome. 

His diary reflects the changing moods of his nature. A 
few days later, his mood was one of depression : — 

"I am at present meditating, recalling all the unpleas- 
ant episodes of my life, for in moments of depression they 
come into one's mind to the exclusion of everything else. 
. . . No, there is too little of joy to let us love life; man 
is so capable of picturing happiness and then, too often, 
Fate in one way or another strikes him, cruelly, most 
cruelly, clutching at his heart-strings. So there is some- 
thing fine and noble in manifesting indifference to life; 



46 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

I delight in this feeling. How strong I feel myself in 
facing all that may happen ! How firm is my conviction 
that nothing but death is to be expected here. Yet the 
next moment I was thinking with pleasure about a saddle 
which I have ordered and on which I shall ride dressed in 
a Tcherkess cloak and about the way I shall carry on with 
the Cossack girls; and then I fall into despair because my 
left mustache is higher than my right and I waste two 
hours trying to arrange them. " 

About the same time he wrote his aunt still another 
long letter, in French as usual, for she was a woman of the 
old school who knew the polite language better than her 
native tongue. In this he describes his surroundings at 
the springs, where the " water was so hot that Nikolai's 
dog which fell in was scalded to death. " He says: — 

"We have been here for nearly three weeks and are 
living in a tent. But as the weather is fine and I take to 
this kind of life, I find myself very comfortable. There 
are magnificent views here, beginning from the place 
where the springs are situated. It is an enormous moun- 
tain of stones piled one on another. Some of them have 
fallen off and make something like grottoes; others remain 
hanging at a great height. They are all cut by torrents 
of hot water, falling noisily in some places and, especially 
in the morning, covering all the upper part of the moun- 
tain with a white mist which continually rises from this 
boiling water. It is so hot that eggs boil hard in it in three 
minutes. 

"In the midst of this ravine, over the principal stream, 
are three mills, one above the other, built in a quite 
peculiar and very picturesque manner. All day long the 
Tartar women come without cessation to wash their clothes 
both above and below the mills. I must tell you that 
they wash with their feet. It is like an ever busy ant-hill. 
The women are generally handsome and well-formed. 
The costumes of the Oriental women in spite of their pov- 
erty are beautiful. The picturesque groups made by 



A FLIGHT TO THE CAUCASUS 47 

these women framed into the wild beauty of the place 
make a truly admirable landscape. I often spend hours 
admiring this scenery. Then the view from the top of 
the mountain is still more lovely, though in a quite 
different way. But I fear I am boring you with my 
descriptions. 

"I am very well satisfied to be at the springs, because I 
am benefiting from them. I am taking chalybeate baths 
and no longer suffer pain in my legs. I have always been 
subject to rheumatism, but during our journey down the 
river I suspect I took more cold. I have rarely been so 
well as I am now, and in spite of the high temperature I 
move about a good deal. " 

These sulphur springs were situated in the Cossack 
district of Stary Yurt, in which, according to Tolstoi's 
account, there were about fifteen hundred inhabitants. 
The visitors, attracted by the superior qualities of the 
waters, had to be protected against attack by the 
Tchetchens who lurked in the fastnesses of the mountains. 



VII 

A COSSACK VOLUNTEER 

The new energy which he felt he expended in making 
expeditions with the troops. One time in company with 
a Cossack friend Yepishka — the Yeroshka of the " Cos- 
sacks' ' — he made the perilous journey to the Yurt of 
Hossaf far up in the mountains. In August, as a volun- 
teer, he risked his life in various expeditions against the 
Tchetchens. On his return to Starogladovsk he was pre- 
sented to General Prince Baryatinsky, the Commander- 
in-Chief of the Russian forces, who, having noticed his 
gallantry, advised him to enter the army. His great 
uncle Count Ilya Tolstoi invited him to join his com- 
pany. In consequence of this advice Tolstoi made his 
decision and sent in his petition to be allowed to pass the 
examinations. About the middle of October, after an 
arduous seven days' journey through beautiful scenery, 
he arrived with his brother at Tifiis, and remained there 
to prepare for the ordeal. From there he wrote his aunt 
telling her about that half-Europeanized city which aped 
Petersburg and had a Russian theater and an Italian 
opera. He lived at Sakashan village in the German 
quarter, in "a very pretty place surrounded by gardens 
and vineyards." He paid five rubles a month for two 
" tolerably clean rooms" and in addition got practice in 
German. After telling her that he had books, occupation 
and leisure and that though no one came to disturb him, 
he was not dull, he added at the end of his letter a para- 
graph which in the light of his later development is most 
significant. He said: — 

" Do you recall, dear aunt, a piece of advice whicn you 

48 



A COSSACK VOLUNTEER 49 

once gave me — that I should write novels? Well, I am 
following your advice and the occupation which I just 
mentioned consists in producing literature. I know not 
whether what I am writing will ever appear, but the work 
amuses me and I have already persevered in it too long 
to abandon it." 

He did not tell her what it was, but we shall soon see 
that it was " Childhood," the first part of an autobio- 
graphical romance. 

Early in January, 1852, he wrote his brother Sergyei, 
giving amusing details of his life in Tifiis. He told him 
of his. approaching nomination as a volunteer private in 
the Fourth Battery and promised him that on that very 
day he would gladly exchange his fashionable overcoat and 
opera hat for the gray uniform and proceed immediately 
to the front and "according to his powers, contribute with 
the aid of cannon, to the slaughter of the wild rebellious 
Asiatics." He told him of his hunting expeditions: 
"Sport here," he said, "is splendid; open fields, marshy 
ground, full of hares, and clusters, not of trees, but of 
rushes, in which foxes find cover. I have been out hunt- 
ing nine times in all, about ten or fifteen versts from the 
stanitsa, with two dogs, of which one is excellent and 
the other a good-for-nothing. I got two foxes and sixty 
hares." 

In these hunting expeditions his bulldog Bulka and his 
setter Milton took active part, both of them, as he tells us, 
having narrow^ escapes from frenzied animals at bay. 

His letter goes on to tell of his acquaintances, for he 
recognized that that was Sergyei' s weakness, though it 
did not in the least interest himself. He kept on good 
terms with the few officers residing in Tifiis and the chance 
acquaintances he had made with the officers of other 
regiments by having vodka, wine and zakuska to regale 
them with w T hen they came to see him. He described 
Lieutenant- Colonel Alekseyef, Commander of the Fourth 
Battery, as a very kind but a very vain man, and he con- 



50 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

fessed and repented that he took advantage of that weak- 
ness on the ground that he needed him. Among his chief 
acquaintances at Tiflis was Prince Baryatinsky, who as 
he said naturally did not afford him much recreation, the 
relations of a generalissimo with a volunteer-private 
precluding deep intimacy. Another was an apothecary's 
assistant, a Pole reduced to the ranks. 

"I am sure," he wrote, " Prince Baryatinsky never im- 
agined that he could be placed in any kind of a list next to 
an apothecary's assistant, but so it has happened." 

As a bit of interesting news from the frontier he informs 
his brother that the most important person among the 
Tchetchens, next to the Shamyl, the leader and organizer 
of the tribal rebellion against the Russians, Hadji-Murat, 
the first jigit and hero of the region, had given himself up 
and that " the brave and skillful general Slyeptsdf had been 
killed. If you want to know whether it hurt him," he 
added, "I cannot tell you." 

On the eighteenth of January he wrote his Aunt Taty- 
ana a long letter in French. It is remarkable as showing 
the tenderness of his heart and the confession of his 
weakness. It also contains his own version of one of the 
most remarkable episodes of his life. He told her how 
her last letter had made him weep, not because of the 
weakness which had resulted from a long illness, but the 
tears that he shed when thinking of her and of her unself- 
ish love were so sweet that he could let them flow without 
any false shame. He reproached her for desiring " to 
join those that were no more. " 

" When you say that you are asking God to put an end 
to your life which seems to you so lonely and unendur- 
able — pardon me, dear aunt, but it seems to me that 
you offend God and me and all of us who love you so 
dearly. You ask God for death, in other words, for the 
greatest misfortune that could happen to me. (This is 
not a mere phrase, but God is my witness that the 
two greatest misfortunes that could happen to me w r ould 



A COSSACK VOLUNTEER 51 

be your death or' Nikolai's — the two persons whom I 
love more than myself.) What would be left for me if 
God should grant your prayer? For whose pleasure 
should I then wish to become better, to have good quali- 
ties, to have a high reputation in the world? When I 
make plans of happiness for myself, the idea that you 
would share and enjoy my happiness is always present in 
my mind. When I do any good deed, I am satisfied with 
myself because I know that you will be satisfied with me. 
When I behave badly, what I most fear is grieving you. 
Your love is everything to me and yet you ask God to 
separate us! I cannot tell you how I feel toward you; 
words are incapable of expressing it and I am afraid you 
will think that I am exaggerating; and yet I am weeping 
hot tears as I write to you. I am indebted to this painful 
separation for making me realize what a friend I have in 
you and how much I love you. " 

Tolstoi, who in his " Confession" tells us that from the 
age of fifteen he had consciously rejected the beliefs taught 
him in childhood, had ceased to go to church and almost 
gone so far in his skepticism as to deny that there was a 
God, registers in this same letter to his aunt " an event 
which would have made him believe in God, even if he 
had not for some time past firmly believed in Him." This 
is the story that he tells : — 

"Last summer at Stary Yurt all the officers who were 
there did nothing but gamble, and the stakes were high. 
As it is impossible when living in camp not to meet fre- 
quently I was very often present when the games were 
played, but in spite of all they said to persuade me, I 
stood firm for a month. But one fine day, just for fun I 
put down a small stake. I lost, staked again, again I lost 
I had a net of bad luck. The passion for play reawoke in 
me and in two days I lost all the money I had and what 
Nikolai had given me — about two hundred and fifty 
rubles — and besides that five hundred rubles, for which I 
gave a note-of-hand, payable in January, 1853. 



52 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

" You must know that there is near the camp an aul 
inhabited by Tchetchens. Sado, a young fellow (a Tche- 
tchen),used to come to the camp and play, but as he could 
not reckon or set his figures down, there were blackguards 
who cheated him. On this account I never cared to play 
against Sado and I even told him that he ought not to take 
part because he was being tricked, and I offered to play 
for him as his agent. He was very grateful to me for this 
and made me a present of a purse. As it is the national 
custom to exchange gifts, I gave him a wretched gun 
which I had bought for eight rubles. You must know 
that in order to become a kunak, which means friend, it is 
customary to exchange gifts and then to eat in the kunak* s 
house. After that, according to the ancient custom of 
these peoples (which scarcely exists except by tradition), 
you become friends for life and death: that is to say, if I 
should ask him for all his money or his wife or his weapons 
or the most precious things he possesses, he would be 
obliged to give them to me and I on my part could not 
refuse him anything. 

"Sado made me promise to come to his house and be- 
come his 'kunak. 9 I went. After having regaled me in 
their fashion, he proposed that I should choose anything in 
his house that I might wish — his arms, his horse, any- 
thing. ... I wanted to choose what was of the least 
value, and I took a horse's bridle with silver mountings, 
but he said that I was offending him and obliged me to 
take a sword worth at least a hundred rubles. His father 
is rather rich, but keeps his money buried and does not 
give his son a sou. The son, in order to have money, goes 
and steals horses and cows from the enemy; sometimes he 
risks his life twenty times over in order to steal something 
not worth ten rubles, but it is not done through greed, but 
because it is the thing. The greatest robber is highly 
esteemed and called jigit-, 'a brave. ' Sometimes Sado has 
a thousand rubles, sometimes not a sou. After one visit 
to him I made him a present of Nikolai's silver watch, 



A COSSACK VOLUNTEER 53 

and we became the best friends in the world. Several 
times he has proved his devotion by exposing himself 
to danger for me; but that is nothing to him — it has 
become a habit and a pleasure. 

"When I left Stary Yurt and Nikolai remained there, 
Sado used to go to him every day, saying he did not know 
what to do without me and that he felt terribly dull. I 
wrote to Nikolai that as my horse was sick, I begged him to 
find one for me at Stary Yurt. When Sado learned this 
he made haste to come to me and to give me his horse, 
in spite of all I did to refuse it. 

"After my folly in gambling at Stary Yurt I did not 
touch cards again, and I was always lecturing Sado, who 
had a passion for gambling and, although he does not 
know how to play, always has wonderfully good luck. 
Last evening I was engaged in considering my money 
affairs and my debts. I was thinking how I could pay 
them. After long deliberation over these things, I saw 
that, if I do not spend too much, all my debts will not 
embarrass me but may be paid off little by little in the 
course of two or three years; but the 500 rubles I had to 
pay this month filled me with despair. It was impossible 
for me to pay them, and at that moment they embarrassed 
me much more than did previously the four thousand to 
Ogoryof. The stupidity, after having contracted those 
debts in Russia and of coming here only to contract new 
ones, threw me into despair. 

"In the evening while saying my prayers, I begged 
God and very fervently to extricate me from this disagree- 
able situation. 'But how can I get out of this scrape?' 
I asked myself as I went to bed. 'Nothing can happen to 
make it possible for me to settle that debt ! ' I was already 
picturing to myself all the annoyances I should have to 
undergo on account of it; how the creditor would present 
the note for collection, how the authorities would demand 
an explanation as to why I did not pay, and all the rest 
of it. 'Lord help me ! ' I exclaimed and fell asleep. 



54 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

" The next day I received a letter from Nikolai, together 
with one from you and several others. He wrote me : — ■ 

"'The other day Sado came to see me. He won your 
notes from Knorring and brought them to me. He was 
so glad that he won them and kept asking me so often, 
"What do you think? Will your brother be glad that I 
have done this?" that I have become very fond of him. 
This man is really attached to you. ■ 

"Is it not astonishing to see one's petitions granted 
like this on the very next day? i.e. there is nothing so 
astonishing as the divine goodness to one who deserves it 
so little as I do. And is not Sado's trait of devotion 
admirable? He knows that I have a brother Sergyei 
who is fond of horses and as I have promised to take him 
to Russia when I go back, he tells me that if it should cost 
him his life a hundred times he will steal the best horse 
there is in the mountains and take it to him. 

"Please procure at Tula a six-barreled revolver and a 
music-box, if that does not cost too much. These are 
things that will give him much pleasure. " 

It is perhaps difficult for any one brought up in Puritan 
traditions, where religion is such an intimate, timid mani- 
festation of the soul that expression of it before others is 
given only with a sense of self-consciousness and almost 
shame, to understand its universal openness in Catholic 
countries. Religion with the Greek and Roman Catholic 
is a very vital and everyday matter. It certainly was 
with Tolstoi. Thus a few days later, while delayed 
at the post-station of Mozdok on his way back to 
Starogladovsk, he wrote to his aunt still another letter, 
which gives an extraordinarily interesting idea of his 
religious convictions and of the life-ideal that he was 
formulating at the time: — 

"I find myself greatly changed morally, and this has 
been the case so very often. However, I believe such 
is every one's fate. The longer one lives the more one 
changes: you who have had experience tell me, is not 



A COSSACK VOLUNTEER 55 

this true ? I think that the defects and the good quali- 
ties — the background of one's character — will always 
remain the same, but the way of regarding life and 
happiness must change with age. A year ago I thought 
I should find happiness in pleasure, in movement; now, 
on the contrary, rest, both physical and moral, is the state 
I desire. I imagine that the state of rest without worry, 
and with the quiet enjoyment of love and friendship, is 
the acme of happiness for me! But one feels the charm 
of rest only after fatigue, and of the enjoyment of love 
only after being without it. Here I have been deprived 
for some time of both; this is why I long for them so 
keenly. " 

Then, after telling her his dream of an ideal life, he 
ends by saying : — 

"If I were to be made Emperor of Russia, if Peru were 
given me, in a word, if a fairy should come with her wand 
and ask me what I want — my hand on my heart, I should 
reply that my only desire is that this dream may become 
a reality, [' 



VIII 

STIRRINGS OF A NEW SPIRIT 

In February, after his return to Starogladovsk, he took 
part in an expedition against the Tchetchens. He was 
now a non-commissioned officer in the Artillery and his 
gallantry was noticed. With his usual carelessness in 
providing himself with his birth-certificate and other 
papers, he missed the decoration which he coveted. He 
wrote his aunt : — 

" During this expedition I twice had the chance of being 
recommended for the cross of St. George, and I was pre- 
vented from receiving it because that cursed paper was a 
few days late. I was c presented' for the eighteenth of 
February (my Saint's day), but they had to withdraw it 
because that document was lacking. The list of recom- 
mendations was sent off on the nineteenth; the document 
arrived on the twentieth. I frankly confess to you that 
of all military honors that little cross is the only one that 
I have had the vanity of desiring for myself. " 

In this respect his ambition was not gratified, though 
three times the opportunity came to him. In the one 
case, he renounced the honor in favor of a deserving 
veteran who, as his colonel assured him, would by reason 
of it receive a life-pension. The third time he lost it 
through his own fault. The award had been made in his 
favor, but when the Commander of his Division noticed 
one night that he was absent from duty he placed him 
under arrest. His dereliction from duty was due to his 
zeal in playing chess. So absorbed was he in his game 
late at night that he omitted to go to his post. That 
game of chess cost him his cross. The name of the 

56 



STIRRINGS OF A NEW SPIRIT 57 

brigade commander who reported his absence was 
Levin. 

If any one desires to know the kind of military duty in 
which Tolstoi' was engaged at this time, it will be found 
depicted in several of his tales: "The Invaders," "The 
Wood-cutting Expedition," "An Old Acquaintance," 
and "The Cossacks." 

While not absent on some dangerous skirmish with the 
natives, he w r as living for the most part at Starogladovsk. 
The inhabitants of this village were descendants of the 
Russian sect of the Starovyer or Old Believers who had 
settled in the Caucasus in order to escape persecution. 
Many of them had intermarried with the Mohammedan 
Tchetchens and, while they had adopted some of the 
customs of the natives, held themselves superior to them. 

If "The Cossacks" may be taken as founded on Tol- 
stoi's own vital experiences, we may suppose that he fell in 
love with one of the Cossack maidens. They were re- 
nowned for their beauty, for their fine figures, and for the 
freedom permitted them in their relations with men. 

He represents his hero, Olyenin, as deeply impressed 
by the Cossack maiden Maryanka. He admired her as 
he "admired the beauty of the mountains and of the sky, 
for she was as beautiful as they." He struggled against 
the influence that she exerted over him. He asked him- 
self: "Is it possible for me to love a woman who will 
never comprehend the spiritual interests of my life? 
Can I love a woman for her beauty alone, can I love a 
statue of a woman ? " 

He imagined her pure, inaccessible and majestic. He 
could see that she saw under his pretended indifference 
the storm of passions and desires in his heart. Yet she 
treated him with calm, proud indifference. He could 
not bring himself to make her his wife; his soul revolted 
at the thought of taking her as his mistress. Yet he was 
actually tempted to enroll himself as a Cossack, steal 
herds of horses, get drunk — for drunkenness as he ex- 



58 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

plains was with the Cossacks almost a religious rite — and 
having shown his recklessness by killing some of the 
Tchetchens in desperate conflict come back and climb 
through the window to spend the night with her, after 
the native fashion. But everlastingly arose the question, 
"Who am I and why am I?" If he could rid himself 
of the perpetual self analysis, then, he says, "We might 
understand each other and I might be happy. " 

A prey to these contrary moods, he is restless and 
wretched. One day he is out hunting in the woods. 
He lies down to rest in the bed of an old stag and myriads 
of gnats settle down upon him. He endures their 
stings, with perhaps the same feeling of penance with 
which in his story "Boyhood" he held Tatishchef's 
lexicon for five minutes in his outstretched hand or 
went into his garret and whipped himself on the bare 
back with a rope till the tears came. 

The pain of the gnats becomes almost agreeable: "It 
even seemed to him that if that atmosphere of gnats, 
surrounding him on all sides, that paste of gnats that 
rolled up under his hand when he wiped his sweaty face, 
and that itching' over his whole body, were not there, 
the forest would have lost for him its wild character 
and its charm." 

He communes with himself: "Around me flying 
among the leaves which seem to them immense islands, 
the gnats are dancing in the air and buzzing — one, two, 
three, four, a hundred, a thousand, a million gnats; and 
all these for some reason or other are buzzing around me 
and each one of them is just as much a separate entity, 
apart from all the others, as I am!" 

And having reached the conclusion that instead of being 
a rich Moscow nobleman, a man of family and connec- 
tions, he is in reality of no more consequence than a gnat 
or a pheasant, or a stag, he throws himself down on his 
knees and begs God to let him live to do some great deed : 
for "happiness," he declares, " consists in living for others. 



STIRRINGS OF A NEW SPIRIT 59 

That is clear. The demand for happiness is inborn in 
man; consequently it is legitimate. If we seek to gratify 
it selfishly by seeking wealth, fame, comfort, love, circum- 
stances may render the gratification of these desires im- 
possible. Therefore, then, they are illegitimate, but the 
demand for happiness itself is not illegitimate. Now 
what desire can always be satisfied in spite of outward 
conditions? Love, self-sacrifice!" 

Olyenin was so glad and so excited at discovering this 
new truth, as it seemed to him, that he jumped up and 
began impatiently seeking for some one for whom he 
might immediately sacrifice himself — to whom he 
might do good and whom he could love. "Yes, for 
myself I need nothing," he kept repeating in his mind. 
"Then why not live for others?" 

But he sought in vain for the opportunity to sacrifice 
himself. "He was restrained from becoming a Cossack 
by the dim consciousness that he could not live the wild, 
reckless life of Lukashka and Uncle Yeroshka because of 
his newly found ideal of happiness." 

The self-consciousness stimulated by Tolstoi's reading 
of Rousseau and constantly urging him to confession 
either to his diary or to his aunt made him dissatisfied, 
and the ideal of happiness forever lured him on. His 
whole life was a search for it. The need of expression 
was also growing ever more pressing. He had not the 
tactful and gracious ways of his brother Nikolai. He 
was undoubtedly opinionated and testy. At all events 
his brother officers left him severely alone, just as was the 
case of Olyenin: "The officers regarded him as an aris- 
tocrat and therefore in their intercourse with him treated 
him with distant respect. Gambling and carousals with 
singers, in which he had found amusement, when he was 
serving with the detachment, no longer attracted him 
and he avoided the officers' society." 

What he thus depicted in his hero in the novel he elab- 



6o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

orates in a letter written to his aunt, in which he says re- 
garding himself : — 

" Since my journey and stay at Tiflis my way of life has 
not changed; I endeavor to make as few acquaintances as 
possible, and to avoid intimacy with those whose acquaint- 
ance I have made. People have become accustomed to 
my manner; they no longer bother me, and I am sure they 
say he is a 'strange' or a ' proud ' man. 

"Not from pride do I behave thus; it has come of itself. 
There is too great a difference between the education, the 
sentiments, and the point of view of those whom I meet 
here and my own for me to find any pleasure in their 
society. Nikolai has the talent (notwithstanding the 
enormous difference there is between him and them) to 
amuse himself with all these gentlemen, and be liked by 
all. I envy him his talent, but feel I cannot do the same. 

"It is true that this kind of life is not adapted for amuse- 
ment, and for a very long time I have not thought about 
pleasures. I long to be quiet and contented. Some 
time ago I began to appreciate historical reading (this used 
to be a point of contention between us, but I am at present 
entirely of your opinion); my literary occupations also 
advance in their small way, although I do not as yet con- 
template publishing anything. Three times I have writ- 
ten over a work I began a very long time ago, and I intend 
to rewrite it once more in order to be satisfied with it. 
Perhaps the task will be like Penelope's but that does not 
deter me; I write not from ambition, but because I enjoy 
it; I find pleasure and profit in working, and I work. 

"Although I am far from amusing myself, as I have told 
you, I am also very far from being dull, as I have found 
something to do; besides this, I enjoy a pleasure sweeter 
and more elevated than any that society could have given 
me— that of feeling at rest in my conscience; of knowing 
myself, of understanding myself better than I did formerly 
and of feeling good and generous sentiments stirring 
within me. 



STIRRINGS OF A NEW SPIRIT 61 

" There was a time when I was vain of my intelligence, 
of my position in this world, and of my name, but now I 
know and feel that if there is anything good in me, and if 
I have to thank Providence for it, it is a kind heart, sensi- 
tive and capable of love, which it has pleased God to give 
me and to keep for me. 

"To this alone I owe the brightest moments I have, and 
the fact that, notwithstanding the absence of pleasures 
and society, I am not only at my ease but often happy. " 

In his diary of this period he thus characterizes the 
three principal passions which were likely to be his beset- 
ting temptations : — 

"i. The passion of gambling is one of covetousness 
which gradually develops into a craving for strong excite- 
ment. One can struggle against this passion. 

" 2. Sensuality is a physical need, a demand of the body, 
and is excited by the imagination. It increases with ab- 
stinence and consequently the struggle against it is very 
difficult. The best way to overcome it is by work and 
occupation. 

"3. Vanity is the passion that is least harmful to others 
and most harmful to oneself." 

The work and occupation which he had laid out for 
himself beyond the exigencies of his military service he 
hints at in the letter above cited. In May he was again 
troubled with his old enemy, rheumatism, and he ob- 
tained leave of absence and went to the sulphur springs of 
Besh-tau or Five Mountains. Pyatigorsk is the Russian 
translation of the Tartar name. The chalybeate waters, 
" steaming as from a samovar," flow down into the river 
Podkiimok. The views are of surpassing grandeur. 
From every view-point can be seen in fair weather the 
great giant Elbruz, 18,450 feet in height and covered with 
perpetual snow. A score of other peaks, each higher than 
Mont Blanc, "white as sugar," stretch away toward that 
region known as Pa- Mir, the Top of the World. 



62 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

In a letter to Count Sergye'i he depicts with unusual 
gayety the kaleidoscopic life of this watering-place: — 

" Society," he says, " consists of pomyeshchiki — the 
technical term for all visitors to the place — who scorn the 
local civilization, and of officers, who regard the local 
pleasures as the height of bliss. 

" Along with me arrived from headquarters an officer 
of our battery. You should have seen his delight and 
excitement as we entered the town. He had already told 
me a great deal about the distractions of watering-places — ■ 
how all the people walk up and down the boulevards while 
the band plays and then, so he declared, all go to the 
restaurant and there make acquaintances among the great 
families. Theaters, clubs, weddings every year, duels 
and the like — in a word it is quite like Paris. 

"The moment we dismounted from our tarantds my 
worthy officer put on blue trousers with terribly tight 
straps, boots with enormous spurs, and his epaulets, and 
having thus adorned himself he went for a promenade 
along the boulevard while the band played, then to the 
restaurant, the theater and the club. But as far as I can 
make out, now after a whole month, instead of scraping 
acquaintance with any of the great families or winning a 
bride with a dowry of a thousand souls, he has only 
learned, to know three shabby officers who at cards filched 
the last kopeck out of his pockets, and only one private 
house, in which, moreover, two families live in one room 
and tea is served with lumps of sugar to put into your 
mouth. 

"This officer also spent during this month about twenty 
rubles on porter and sweets, and he bought a bronze mirror 
to adorn his toilet-table. 

"Now he is walking about in an old jacket without 
epaulets, is drinking sulphur water as hard as he can, and 
seems to be taking a serious cure; but he is amazed be- 
cause although he promenaded every day along the boule- 
vard, was assiduous in his attendance at the restaurant 



STIRRINGS OF A NEW SPIRIT 63 

and did not grudge his money for the theater or for gloves 
and cabs, he could not become acquainted with the aristoc- 
racy — here at every little Post there is an aristocracy — 
while the aristocracy, as if to spite him, arranges excur- 
sions and picnics and he is not admitted anywhere. 

" Almost all the officers who came here suffer a like fate; 
but they make believe that they come merely for treatment : 
so they limp about on crutches, wear slings and bandages, 
get drunk and tell wild yarns about the Tcherkess. But 
when they are back at headquarters again they will boast 
how they were acquainted at the great houses and amused 
themselves immensely; and so every season they go to the 
watering-places in throngs to have a good time ! " 

During the months spent at Besh-tau his sister Marya 
and her husband came to take the cure for rheumatism. 
He did not confide to them that he was engaged in writing 
a novel, but they knew that he was interested in spiritual- 
ism. Such was his zeal in experimenting with its sup- 
posed manifestations that he borrowed a table from a res- 
taurant and held a seance on the boulevard. Half a century 
later he wrote an English friend: "I cannot help saying 
that I am sorry for the importance that you attach to 
spiritualism. Your true and pure Christian faith and life 
are much more reliable than all that the spirits can say to 
you. " 



IX 

FIRST APPEARANCE IN PRINT 

Having hammered his first story into shape by .multi- 
plied copyings and emendations, Tolstoi signed the manu- 
script with only his initials L. N. T. and despatched it 
early in July to the leading Russian monthly, Sovremennik, 
the editor of which was Nikolai Alekseyevitch Nekrasof, 
the poet. A month later he returned to his military duties 
at Starogladovsk, where, as he wrote his aunt, he spent 
the time rather disagreeably, owing to the drilling which 
the general considered necessary for an approaching re- 
view of the troops. He said : — 

" Marching and discharging various kinds of guns are 
not very pleasant, especially as the exercise interferes with 
the routine of my life. 

" Fortunately it did not last long and I have again 
resumed my usual manner of living, which consists in 
hunting, writing, reading, and talking with Nikolai. I 
have taken to sport, and as I have turned out to be a fairly 
good shot this occupation takes up two or three hours a day. 
In Russia no one has an idea how much and what excel- 
lent game is to be found here. A hundred paces from 
where I live I find pheasants, and in half an hour I bag 
two, three,, or four. Besides the pleasure, the exercise is 
good for my health, which, in spite of the waters, is not in 
first-rate condition. I am not ill, but I very often suffer 
from colds, at one time from a bad throat, at another from 
toothache, which I still have; at times from rheumatism, 
so that at least for two days a week I keep my room. 

"Do not think I am concealing anything from you; I 
am, as I have always been, of a strong constitution, but of 

64 



FIRST APPEARANCE IN PRINT 65 

weak health. I intend passing next summer again at the 
waters. Even if I am not cured by them, I am sure they 
have done me good — ' there is no evil without good.' 
When I am indisposed, I can work, with less fear of being 
distracted, at another novel which I have begun. " 

In "The Cossacks" and in his stories for children he 
gives fascinating details of hunting the steppe grouse. 
Nekrasof, writing to the author of " Childhood," mentioned 
as "the incontestable merits" of the story its simplicity 
and lifelike character. That must have pleased Tolstoi, 
for on his arrival at Starogladovsk, about the middle of 
August, he had written in his diary that "simplicity was 
the virtue he above all others yearned to acquire." Ne- 
krasof expressed himself as much pleased with the author's 
novel and predicted that if the continuation should dis- 
play "more vivacity and movement, " as he had no doubt 
it would, a very good novel would result. He ended by 
urging the unknown writer to "appear with his full name, 
unless he were only a casual visitor in the domain of 
literature." 

Still a month later, about the middle of September, 
Nekrasof, having read the story in proof, came to the con- 
clusion that it was much better than it appeared to him 
at first. Tolstoi, who had confided to his diary that the 
arrival of the editor's first letter signifying his acceptance 
of the story made him "mad with joy," now notes that he 
received praise but no money. 

Nekrasof, however, in still a third letter, explained that 
it was the custom of all best periodicals not to pay any- 
thing for an author's first work. This initiation had 
affected Gontcharof, Druzhinin, and other well-known 
writers, including Nekrasof himself. But since the story 
had been so well received by the public, he covenanted to 
pay the very highest rates for his subsequent w T ork. That 
was fifty rubles for a sheet, equivalent to about two dol- 
lars a printed page. He added that since his novel had 
been so successful they would be very glad to get his 



66 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

second instalment. Again he insisted that the author 
should give him exact information regarding its author- 
ship; that was one of the requirements of the censorship. 

Tolstoi, then as afterwards, had good reason to com- 
plain of that foul harpy of literature. He wrote his 
brother that " Childhood" was spoiled by what was stricken 
out or changed. If we could have Tolstoi's works as they 
were originally written, we should undoubtedly have to 
make a considerable change in our estimate of their 
artistic value. If Russian literature could have devel- 
oped unhampered by the apprehension of repression and 
mutilation, its flowering would undoubtedly have been 
quite different. As there are compensations for all misfor- 
tunes, the Russian poets and novelists have been largely 
cut off from didacticism: the lessons they have taught have 
been by means of concrete examples without comment, 
and as the spirit of a nation cannot be wholly crushed even 
by the dead weight of a bigoted and purblind board of 
critics bound to see dangerous heresies in every new idea, 
Russian authors learned to throw dust in the eyes of 
stupidity. Just as there are violet rays invisible to the 
ordinary vision, so there are ways of expression which pass 
the eyes of the censor, carrying with them the lesson which 
if plainly exposed would be regarded as dangerous. 

The Countess Marya Tolstaya, after her return to her 
estate, read "The History of My Childhood" — as the 
first instalment of! the novel was called — in a copy of the 
September Sovremennik brought by Turgenief, whose 
estate of Spasskoye was near by. She recognized a 
good many of the events related in it and at first thought 
that it must be from the pen of her brother Nikolai. But 
the initials were those of the younger brother. Panayef, 
one of the founders of the Sovremennik, was so captivated 
by the story that he used to read it aloud to every person 
he could find to listen to him. Turgenief declared that 
his friends, seeing him coming along the Nevsky Prospekt, 



FIRST APPEARANCE IN PRINT 67 

would hide for fear he should begin citing passages from 
the new novel which he had learned by heart. 

The critic Zyelinsky called " Childhood" an immense 
chain of poetical and naive conceptions. The author's 
ability to put himself into the child's mind and to depict 
the various characters in such a lifelike manner, although 
never departing from the standpoint of the boy whose 
recollections are thus transcribed. . . . The great novel- 
ist, Feodor Mikhailovitch Dostoyevsky, read a copy of the 
magazine in his Dead House of exile, in far-away Siberia, 
and was deeply impressed with the story told by L. N. T. 
and wrote a friend begging him to discover the writer's 
identity. 

In October, 1852, while still at Starogladovsk, Tolstoi 
laid out the plan for a novel the hero of which should be a 
Russian landed-proprietor, seeking for the realization of 
his ideal of happiness and of justice in the country, but 
failing to find it even in family life is convinced that happi- 
ness consists in constant work with the happiness of others 
as its object. The short sketch, " A Pomyeshchik's Morn- 
ing," for which he drew on his recollections of his altruis- 
tic farming at Yasnaya Polyana, was the outcome of this. 

Early in January, 1853, he finished his story "Nabyeg" 
— The Raid (or, as translated, "The Invaders") — and 
sent it to the Sovremennik. The same month he was 
engaged in active service against the Tcherkess leader, 
the great Shamyl, the clever Sufi mollah who for a 
generation had been waging a holy war against the giaours. 

Yanzhiil's " History of the Twentieth Artillery Brigade " 
tells how during three days five guns of Battery No. 4 
discharged six hundred volleys and at one of them served 
Count L. N. Tolstoi, afterward known as the author of 
various immortal works, and how on the last day of Jan- 
uary he was despatched with a howitzer to the fort and 
village of Gerzel. In an engagement early in February, 
as he was sighting a cannon a grenade fired by the Tcher- 



68 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

kes smashed the carriage and burst at his feet, but without 
even wounding him. 

In spite of his reckless bravery and his excellent record 
in the ranks he failed of promotion. This was not due to 
the unfriendliness of his superior officer, as has been sug- 
gested, but rather to his habitual carelessness regarding 
his papers. The truth of the matter was he detested all 
such formalities. After a year's service he was informed 
that he must serve three years longer. This was too 
much for his impatient nature. He complained to his 
Aunt Yushkova, and through the influence that she 
brought to bear on officials of high rank that difficulty 
was smoothed away. But he had got his fill of army life, 
and in May, 1853, he wrote his brother Sergyei' a hurried 
letter in which after bitterly complaining that the censor- 
ship had deleted or mutilated all that was good in his 
stories, he informed him that he had handed in his 
resignation and expected in about six weeks to go "as a 
free man" to Besh-tau and from there to Russia. 

But here again the papers which were a perpetual tabu 
in his career were missing and he was to have still further 
experiences in dangerous warfare. 

Toward the latter part of June he had another narrow 
escape from being captured or killed by the enemy. Ow- 
ing to the danger of travel, all stores or baggage as well as 
non-combatants in transit from one stanitsa to another 
were escorted by strong convoys of cavalry. On one such 
occasion Tolstoi with his kunak Sado and four Russian 
officers disobeyed orders and rode ahead of the slowly 
marching infantry train. Tolstoi' and Sado took to the 
ridge that skirted the steppe. Tolstoi was mounted on 
a fiery young horse belonging to his friend. Sado rode 
Tolstoi's staid and heavy pacer. From the crest the two 
suddenly caught sight of a party of Tchetchens dashing 
along from the Khan-Kalsky forest intent on cutting off the 
other three officers on the lower road. Tolstoi shouted a 
warning which was not at first heeded. The result was 



FIRST APPEARANCE IN PRINT 69 

that Baron Rosen, turning his horse, managed to escape 
to the column and give the alarm. Shcherbatchof was 
not so fortunate. The Tartars overtook him, wounded 
him, and captured his horse, but he reached the rescuing 
party on foot. The third officer, Pavel Poltoratsky, trying 
to force his way through the enemy's ranks, had his raven 
black horse killed under him and was slashed by several 
of the Tchetchens and left to bleed to death under the 
weight of his horse. He was rescued just in time to save 
his life. 

Meantime Tolstoi and his friend were pursued by a 
party of seven Tartars, who tried to capture them alive. 
Sado, who had his gun, though it was unloaded, kept the 
enemy off by aiming it at them. They were fortunately 
seen by a sentinel at the fort several miles away and a 
detachment was hastily sent out to their rescue. This 
frightened off the Tchetchens. In Tolstoi's " Prisoner of 
the Caucasus" two officers are not so fortunate. They 
are captured and after trying experiences in the Tartar 
aul one of them manages to escape through the aid of the 
little Tartar maiden, Dina. In this fascinating tale, 
Tolstoi' relates many interesting details of life among the 
Tartars, 



X 

SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

During all this time Tolstoi kept up constant com- 
munion with his own soul, often expressing his thoughts 
in his diary: — 

" Conscience is our best and surest guide, but where 
are the marks distinguishing this voice from other voices ? 
. . . The voice of vanity speaks no less powerfully. 
For instance, an unrevenged offense. 

" Be straightforward; not harsh, but frank with all men; 
yet not childishly, needlessly frank. 

"He whose object is his own happiness is bad; he who 
aims to get the good opinion of others is bad too, he is 
weak; he whose object is the happiness of others is 
virtuous; he whose object is God is great. 

"Refrain from wine and women. The pleasure is so 
small and uncertain — the remorse so great. 

" Justice is the least measure of virtue to which every 
one is bound. Anything higher than justice shows an 
aspiration to perfection, anything lower is [no better than] 
vice. 

"Devote yourself wholly to what you do. On experi- 
encing any strong sensation — wait; but, having once 
considered the matter, act decisively even though you 
be wrong. 

"The future occupies us more than the present. This 
is a good thing if we think of a future in another world. 
To live in the present, i.e. to act in the best way in the 
present — that is wisdom. " 

Life in the Caucasus was beginning to pall on the young 
count. The hunting expeditions with his Cossack friend, 
the monotony of the service, only occasionally varied by 

70 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 71 

forays, the lack of congenial society, his uncertain health, 
his aspirations toward he hardly knew what, combined to 
make him restless and discontented. Toward the end of 
July, 1853, he made another three months' visit to Besh- 
tau, where he wrote his brother that the prospective war 
with Turkey, rumors of which were running through the 
army, very much disturbed him. He had grown so ac- 
customed to the happy thought of settling down once 
more at Yasnaya Polyana that it seemed to him intoler- 
able to return to Starogladovsk and wait there an eternity 
for his resignation to be accepted. 

Return he did to his post, and there again he complains 
bitterly because for more than a year he had been vainly 
trying to sheathe his sword. As army life seemed to be 
his destiny, he had applied to his kinsman Prince S. D. 
Gortchakof to be transferred to Turkey. In a letter 
written to his brother Sergyei' in December he says: — 

" Before the New Year I expect a change in my w r ay of 
life, which I confess has become inexpressibly wearisome 
to me. Stupid officers, stupid conversations, nothing else. 
If there were only one man with whom one might have a 
talk from one's soul ! Turgenief is right in speaking of 
the c irony of solitude': when by oneself one becomes per- 
ceptibly stupid. Nikolenka took the greyhounds away 
with him — God knows why — and Epishka and I often 
call him a pig for this; still, during whole days, from 
morning till night, I go out shooting alone with a dog. 
And this is my only pleasure; indeed, not a pleasure, but a 
means of stupefaction. You get tired and hungry, and 
fall dead asleep, and the day is passed." 

He asked his brother to send him Dickens's " David 
Copperfield" and Saddler's English Dictionary. About 
the same time he notes in his diary that he has changed 
his method of prayer. He has replaced all the prayers of 
his own invention by the one which Christ recom- 
mended — "The Lord's Prayer." "All the supplications 
which I address to God are expressed in a manner far 



72 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

more dignified and more worthy of Him in the words, 
1 Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' " 

His prayer may have accomplished the miracle of pay- 
ing his gambling-debts; they did not seem to hasten 
his promotion. But all things come to those that wait, 
and the long-delayed order having arrived, he went through 
the rather absurd formality of passing the examination, on 
the twenty-fifth of January, 1854, and a week later was on 
his way to Russia. During the journey he encountered 
a terrific snowstorm, the experience of which he after- 
wards utilized in two of his stories, — in "Metyel" 
("The Blizzard") andin"KhozhainiRabotnik" ("Master 
and Man"). 

The poetic and romantic aspects of the Caucasus seem 
not to have affected Tolstoi. To see the effect of that 
influence one must go to the Russian poets, to Pushkin 
and to L6rmontof, many of whose best passages were 
inspired by the sublime scenery which offers such a strik- 
ing contrast to the ocean-level of the steppes. The re- 
peated exclamation, " But the mountains ! " — " A gorui! " 
in "The Cossacks, " the comparison of Elbruz to a sugar- 
loaf, and the steaming waters of the sulphur-fountains to 
a samovar come as near to poetical figures as the realist 
permits. But there is an epic quality in some of the de- 
scriptions — as for example in the scene where the Cos- 
sack Lukashka kills the Abrek who tries to swim the 
Terek and where the Tchetchens come to redeem the 
dead body, and Maryanka is a gracious poetic appari- 
tion, far-off sister of Nausikaa, while the little Tartar 
maiden Dina reminds one of a wild-flower. 

For many years Tolstoi was pleasantly remembered 
among the villagers of Starogladovsk. M. A. Yanzhul, 
an officer in the Artillery Brigade in which Tolstoi had 
served, wrote in 1890 in a Russian magazine his reminis- 
cences of service in the Caucasus : — 

"The village of Starogladovsk, with its handsome 
women of the striking local type, its valiant Grebyensky 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 73 

Cossacks, and 'the commander's house surrounded by 
high old poplars,' described by Tolstoi in his well-known 
story 'The Cossacks,' had been familiar to me for more 
than twenty years. In my time the memory of Lyof 
Nikolayevich, as they called him there, was still fresh in 
the village. They used to point out to me the old Mary- 
ana, the heroine of the story, and several old Cossack 
sportsmen, who knew Tolstoi personally and had shot 
pheasants and hunted wild boars with him. One of 
these Cossacks, as all know, went on horseback in the 
eighties from the village to YasnayaPolyana to pay Tolstoi 
a visit. At the battery I met Captain Trolof (now 
deceased), who had known Tolstoi as a quarter-gunner 
and related incidentally that even then the count pos- 
sessed a marvelous capacity as a story-teller, carrying 
away the listeners by his interesting conversation." 

Tolstoi spent three weeks at his home with his aunt and 
brother. This time was a brief oasis between the guerilla 
warfare of the Caucasus and participation in the grimmer, 
graver conflict that brought about so vast a change in 
Russian life and led directly to the liberation of twenty- 
three million serfs. 

Nicholas I. declared war on Turkey on November 16, 
1853. His motives were undoubtedly mixed. In order 
to arouse the enthusiasm of the people the idea was pro- 
mulgated that it was their duty to free their co-religionists 
in the Danubian provinces from the rule of the Turks. 
It appealed to patriotism to summon all the Slavic 
nationalities to unite under Russia. Panslavism raised 
an oriflamme of war which might well lead a nation into a 
mad fervor of heroism. Always beckoned the hope of 
possessing Constantinople, which the counterfeit will of 
Peter the Great declared the rightful appanage of the 
Tsarian crown. Moreover, the Holy Places of Jerusa- 
lem, which was the Mecca of Russian pilgrims, were under 
the custody of Islam and the same motives as impelled 
Peter the Hermit and all the Crusaders of the Middle 



74 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Ages to march against the Turks still acted on religious 
fanaticism. 

A war with such objects was well calculated to make a 
nation forget its internal grievances and to stifle all aspira- 
tions for greater freedom of thought. A glorious victory- 
over the wily Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid would perhaps make 
the people forget their demands for reforms. Conse- 
quently the forces of "the great white Tsar" seized the 
Danubian provinces as "a material guarantee" that 
Turkey should give the Greek Patriarch and not the 
Roman Patriarch the keys to the Church of Bethlehem. 

But Nicholas did not reckon with the other European 
powers, which have always upheld Turkish despotism. 
Austria and Prussia and England andFrance brought pres- 
sure to bear on Russia to retreat. Napoleon the Little, 
with ulterior ends in view, inveigled Lord Palmerston to 
wage war with Russia in behalf of the Sultan. This absurd 
and needless conflict, which was the cause of countless 
deaths and misery, which piled up colossal debts, impos- 
sible for posterity to pay, which led indirectly to the loss of 
Napoleon's throne and broke Nicholas's heart by hum- 
bling his pride, was as needless a war as was ever waged. 
Hostilities should have ceased when Russia withdrew its 
forces from across the Turkish border. But England 
and France were committed to a policy of madness and 
together they invaded the Crimea. 

In March, 1854, Tolstoi was ordered to join the army 
of the Danube. 

From Bukharest he wrote to his aunt telling her of the 
long journey of two thousand versts, partly in a sleigh and 
partly in a springless cart over abominable roads, through 
a country the language of which he did not understand, so 
that he had to pay for eight horses instead of two. 

"Although my journey lasted only nine days," he says 
"I spent more than two hundred rubles and arrived 
almost ill from fatigue. " 

His kinsman, Prince Gortchakof, friend of his father, 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 75 

received him more cordially than he expected and offered 
to keep him on his staff. He found the city "big and 
beautiful." He enjoyed the Italian opera, the French 
theater, and association with his two kinsmen, the young 
Princes Gortchakof, whom he described as "very fine 
fellows, especially the younger, who, though not particu- 
larly clever, had much nobility of character and a very 
kind heart. " 

He made many new acquaintances and was kept so 
busy that he was away from his quarters most of the time 
and "had not thought of his duties." 

At first his experience of actual service was limited to a 
fortnight at Oltenitsa, where he was attached to a battery, 
and a week spent in traveling about in Moldavia, Valla- 
chia and Bessarabia; but he wrote his aunt in May that 
instead of smelling Turkish powder and being exposed to 
all the dangers of war he was still staying very quietly at 
Bukharest, "walking about, enjoying music and taking 
ices. " A fever which he had contracted had laid him up 
for three weeks, but he was expecting within a few days 
to join his general who was in camp on the Turkish side 
of the Danube near Silistria, which the Russians were be- 
sieging. 

Life was again beginning to pall upon him. He said: 
"To confess frankly, the rather dissipated, perfectly 
idle and very expensive kind of life that I am leading here 
infinitely displeases me." But he liked his general, 
Serzhputovsky, and the staff was composed for the most 
part of gentlemen — gens comme ilfauL It was not very 
long before he was pouring out all the vials of his scorn on 
the gens comme ilfaut. 



XI 

THE CRIMEAN WAR 

Tolstoi took part in the unsuccessful siege of Silistria. 
Afterward, when he had reached Sevastopol, he wrote a 
joint letter to his Aunt Tatyana and his brother Nikolai, in 
which he gives a vivid description of that abortive cam- 
paign and the mysterious recall of the troops. 

Tolstoi did not know the real reason for the retreat of 
the Russian army, but history tells. Austria, jealously 
watching its powerful neighbor's operations, had concen- 
trated a large army on the frontier. In June the Emperor 
Francis Joseph made a treaty of alliance with the Sultan 
and in accordance with its terms demanded that the 
Danubian provinces should be immediately evacuated. 
Russia heeded the threat. 

Tolstoi returned with the army to Bukharest and once 
more took up the unsatisfactory idle life of that gay capi- 
tal. His unrest is reflected as usual in his journal. He 
sums himself up, as it were, in the following characteristic 
passage written on the nineteenth of July: — 

"I have no modesty. That is my great deficiency. 
What am I ? 

"One of the four sons of a retired lieutenant-colonel, 
left from the age of seven without parents, and who, under 
the guardianship of women and strangers, received neither 
a social nor a scientific education, and then was my own 
master at seventeen; a man without any great wealth, 
without any social position, and, above all, without prin- 
ciple, who has let his affairs get out of order to the last 
degree, who has passed the best years of his life without 
aim or pleasure; who finally banished himself to the 

7 6 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 77 

Caucasus in order to run away from his debts, and, above 
all, from his habits, and who, having taken advantage of 
some connection or other which had existed between his 
father and a commander-in-chief, got himself transferred, 
at the age of twenty-six, to the Army of the Danube as 
lieutenant, with hardly any means but his pay (having to 
use such means as he possesses for the payment of his 
remaining debts), without patrons, without knowledge of 
worldly manners, without knowledge of service, without 
practical capacities, but with enormous vanity. Yes, such 
is my social position. 

"Let us see what is my personality. 

"I am ugly, aw T kward, uncleanly, and, in the worldly 
sense, uneducated; I am irritable, a bore to others, rude, 
intolerant, and as bashful as a child. I am almost com- 
pletely ignorant. What I do know I have learned any- 
how, independently, by snatches, incoherently, in a dis- 
orderly way, and all comes to — so little. I am self- 
indulgent, irresolute, inconstant, stupidly vain and hot- 
headed, as are all people with a weak character. I am 
not brave, I am not methodical in my life, and am so lazy 
that for me idleness has become almost a necessary habit. 

"I am intelligent, but my intelligence has not as yet 
been thoroughly tried on anything. I have neither a 
practical nor a worldly nor a business intelligence. 

"I am honest, i.e. I love what is right, have got myself 
into the habit of loving it; and when I deviate from it I am 
dissatisfied with myself, and return to it with pleasure; 
but there are things I like more than what is right — fame. 
I am so vain, and so little has this feeling been gratified, 
that often I am afraid lest, between fame and virtue, I 
might, if the choice were given me, choose the former. 

"Yes, I am arrogant, because I am inwardly proud, 
though I am shy in society. " 

On another occasion, in a passage which reads like a 
study for his story "Family Happiness," he gives a glimpse 
of himself under external conditions : — 



78 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

" After dinner I leaned over the balcony and gazed at 
the lamp-light gleaming brightly through the foliage. 
To-day there had been storm-clouds which had passed 
over and drenched the ground; one big cloud still lingered, 
covering all the sky in the South; there was a particularly 
pleasant light and humid quality in the atmosphere. 
My landlady's pretty daughter like myself was leaning on 
her elbows looking out of the window. A barrel-organ 
came down the street and when the strains of a good old 
waltz, growing more and more distant, completely died 
away, the girl gave a sigh from the bottom of her heart, 
rose quickly and left the window. 

"I felt so happy that I could not help smiling and re- 
mained a long time gazing at the lamp-light, which was 
now and again obscured as the breeze swayed the 
branches of the trees — gazing at the trees, at the fence, 
at the sky; and everything assumed a beauty such as I 
had never seen it wear before. " 

Tolstoi met Prince Gortchakof at a ball at Bukharest 
and begged to be transferred to any position where he 
might take part in active service. This service would 
soon be required. 

Austria and Prussia were satisfied by the Russian evacu- 
ation of Moldavia, but France and England were spoiling 
for a fight. Having determined to diminish Russia's 
preponderance on the Black Sea, they planned to attack 
and destroy the vast military fortress and naval arsenal of 
Sevastopol, which had been established by Katharine the 
Great in 1786 and at this time in strength and complete- 
ness was a second Gibraltar. It commanded the Black 
Sea and was regarded as a perpetual menace to Turkey. 

Hither came the allied fleets in the early days of Sep- 
tember and the troops were disembarked on the sixteenth 
and, marching southward, reached the banks of the Alma, 
where Prince Menshikof's army occupied what he 
regarded as an impregnable position. He was defeated 
and the French and English forces continued their march 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 79 

against Sevastopol. Had they known that the fortress 
was quite incompletely guarded on the land side they 
might have finished the war with short shrift, but neglect- 
ing the great opportunity they proceeded to the south and 
established themselves on two small bays which gave 
them facilities for landing troops and munitions. They 
then proceeded to invest the fortress and city, w T hich in the 
meantime were protected in a masterly manner by the 
great Russian engineer, General Todleben. Then began 
the greatest military duel of the nineteenth century. 

The disastrous battles of Balaklava and Inkerman had 
already been fought when Tolstoi arrived at the front 
eager to participate in the gallant defense. He w r as at- 
tached to the third Battery of the Fourteenth Artillery 
Brigade. Early in December he wrote his brother Sergyei 
explaining his neglect of him, which he said was due to his 
distracted life, full of outside interferences. He gave an 
interesting description of the conditions at Sevastopol and 
told of his scheme for publishing a military newspaper 
written in a popular style, to contain descriptions of battles, 
deeds of bravery, biographies and obituaries, military 
stories and soldiers' songs. For that business he required 
fifteen hundred rubles. He added: — 

"One thing troubles me: this is the fourth year that I 
have been living without female society; I may become 
quite coarse and unfit for family life, which I so enjoy." 

The outcome of his projected military newspaper was a 
bitter disappointment to him, as he explains in a letter 
written to his aunt on the eighteenth of January. He 
was then at Simferopol, where his battery was moved out of 
the fighting zone. He says: — 

" There is no more fighting in the open field, because of 
the winter which is extraordinarily severe, especially at the 
present time; but the siege still continues. 

"What will be the issue of the war ? God only knows! 
In any case, however, the Crimean campaign must come 
to an end in three or four months in one way or another. 



8o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

But unfortunately the end of the Crimean campaign 
would not necessarily mean the end of the war; on the 
contrary it promises to last a very long while. I think I 
have mentioned to Sergyei' an occupation which I had in 
view and which attracted me; now that the matter is 
decided, I can speak about it. I had the idea of establish- 
ing a military journal. This project which I had worked 
up with the cooperation of many very distinguished 
people was approved by the prince and sent to his 
Majesty for his decision, but as in our country there are 
intrigues against everything, we found that there was fear 
of the competition of this paper; then, besides, probably 
the idea of it did not coincide with the views of the Gov- 
ernment. The Emperor refused. 

"This rebuff, I confess, has given me infinite distress 
and greatly changed my plans. If God will that the 
Crimean campaign end well and if I do not receive a satis- 
factory place and if there is no war in Russia, I shall leave 
the army and go to the Military Academy at Petersburg. 
This plan occurred to me, first because I should not like 
to abandon literature, at which it is impossible for me to 
accomplish anything in this camp life, and secondly be- 
cause it seems to me that I am becoming ambitious — 
no, not ambitious, but I should like to do some good and 
in ordef to do it one must be more than a sub-lieutenant; 
thirdly, because I shall see you all and all my friends. " 

In the same letter he first makes mention of the great 
novelist Turgenief . 



XII 

THE SEVASTOPOL SKETCHES 

The fifteen hundred rubles which Tolstoi had expected 
to spend in publishing the military journal proved to be a 
source of temptation. After six weeks of jollity at Sim- 
feropol, where he lived in a landed proprietor's comfort- 
able house, dancing and playing the piano with young 
ladies in town and hunting deer on the mountains that 
run across the Crimea, he was transferred to a battery 
encamped about ten versts from Sevastopol. Here he 
fell in with a disagreeable circle of officers and was under 
a commander whom he characterized as violent and 
coarse though good-hearted. There were no comforts, 
not a book to read, not a person with whom he could talk, 
and the quarters were cold and cheerless. While he was 
there the money from home reached him, and he lost it in 
gambling, and a thousand rubles besides. He found 
"cir Constances attenuantes" for such frivolity but was 
nevertheless very much ashamed of himself. It has been 
supposed that as a consequence of his losses he was about 
this time obliged to sell the large wooden house in which 
he was born. It brought him only five thousand paper 
rubles — equivalent to about eight hundred dollars. It 
was taken down, leaving only the two wings which in after 
years were used respectively for the family and for visitors. 
The main building was reerected on its new owner's 
estate. 

It took him some time to recover from this dissipation 
but he wrote his brother that while he was at Sevastopol, 
whither he was again transferred about the middle of 
April, and under actual fire he quite recovered himself. 

81 



82 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

There, he says, until the twenty-seventh of May, 
that is to say, for four days at a time, at intervals of a 
week, he was in charge of a battery in the Fourth Bastion; 
though he was in serious danger, still it was springtime 
and the weather was excellent; there was an abundance of 
impressions and of people, all the comforts of life were at 
hand and he enjoyed himself with a delightful circle of 
well-bred men. His body-serf, Aleksei, who had accom- 
panied him in all his wanderings, brought him his rations. 

Apparently under this stimulating society and stirred 
by the great emotions which so vast a drama could not 
fail to arouse, he again took up his literary work. He 
had already written the " Wood-cutting Expedition"; 
at Sevastopol he wrote "Youth," the third part of his 
autobiographical story — the second part, "Boyhood," 
having appeared in October, 1854. 

The following month the Emperor Nicholas passed away 
and was succeeded by his son Alexander II. 

Tolstoi was now engaged in chronicling his experiences 
at Sevastopol. His first article, known as " Sevastopol in 
December," but when written entitled "Night in Sevas- 
topol," had been sent to Petersburg and was read in 
proofs by the new Emperor, who ordered it to be translated 
into French and is said to have sent word to Prince 
Gortchakof to "take care of the life of that young man. " 
The Dowager Empress Alexandra Feodorovna shed tears 
over the terrible pictures of death and destruction, the 
eloquent descriptions of heroism and patriotic faith, which 
Tolstoi had the art to put into such simple and convinc- 
ing language. 

The other two parts of the Sevastopol Sketches were 
published in the Sovremennik in the following August 
and in January, 1856. The correspondence between 
Tolstoi and the two editors of that journal throws a flood 
of light on the vexations of being an author in Russia. 

On the twelfth of May Tolstoi wrote to Nekrasof, 
stating that he had done his best to avoid coming into 




Count L. N. Tolstoi. 

From a daguerreotype, 1855. 



THE SEVASTOPOL SKETCHES 83 

conflict with the censor, and apologizing for the wild 
orthography of his manuscript. He also spoke of having 
organized a number of writers who would contribute to 
the Sovremennik the articles that they had promised 
for the military journal, so that Nekrasof might count on 
two, three or four papers of a military character every 
month. 

Panayef wrote him that the " Night in Sevastopol " had 
been passed by the censorship but that he had felt it 
necessary to add a few words at the end to modify a cer- 
tain expression. A little later he wrote him again that 
after three thousand copies of the number containing 
the article had been printed the censors suddenly de- 
manded it back and showed it to the President of the 
Committee of Censors, Pushkin, who fell into a rage and 
with his own hand made various alterations in it. When 
Panayef saw what had happened he was horror-struck 
and was unwilling to print the article at all, but Pushkin 
insisted that it must be issued in its mutilated state; so 
Panayef, feeling that it was unfair to Tolstoi, brought it 
out, only omitting the author's initials. Even as it was, 
however, it was universally liked and Panayef was as- 
sured that it would have been a sin not to publish it. He 
added: — 

"Now I will say a word or two as to the impression 
which your story makes on all to whom I have read it in 
its original form. Every one thinks it stronger than the 
first part, by its profound and subtle analysis of the 
emotions and feelings of men constantly facing death and 
by the fidelity with which the types of the line officers are 
depicted, their encounters wdth the men of the nobility, 
and their mutual relations. In short the whole thing is 
admirable; it is depicted in a masterly fashion; but is so 
permeated with bitterness, is so sharp and biting, so un- 
sparing and so gloomy, that just at present, when the scene 
of the story is regarded as almost holy ground, it pains 



84 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

those that are far from it and the story might even in some 
cases produce an unpleasant impression. " 

In the same letter he reported that the " Wood-cutting 
Expedition," which had pleased Turgenief by its dedica- 
tion, had also been tampered with and that certain parts 
were struck out. 

At the end of " Sevastopol in May " Tolstoi says : "The 
hero of my story, whom I love with all the strength of my 
soul, whom I have tried to reproduce in all his beauty 
and who always has been and always will be beautiful, 
is— Truth." 

Nekrasof refers to this in a letter which also betrays 
great agitation over the ruin which the censorship had 
wrought in the Sevastopol article. He said : — 

"The outrageous mutilation of your article made me to 
the last degree indignant. Even now I cannot think of it 
without bitterness and rage. Your work, of course, will 
not be lost. It will always remain as a proof of the power 
that is capable of uttering such profound and sober truth 
under circumstances amid which few would have been 
able to retain it. I need not say how highly I value that 
article and the direction of your talent as well as your 
power and freshness. It is just what the Russian public 
needs at the present time : the truth — truth of which so little 
remains in Russian literature since Gogol's death. You 
are quite right in valuing that side of your talent most of 
all. Truth in the form that you have introduced it into 
our literature is something quite new to us. I do not 
know of another writer of the present time who so com- 
pels love and hearty sympathy as he to whom I am now 
writing; and I only fear lest the lapse of time, the foulness 
of life and the deafness and dumbness all about us should 
affect you as these things have affected the majority of us 
and kill the energy so indispensable to an author — at 
least to authors such as Russia needs. 

" You are young; changes are taking place and we hope 
that they will result in some good, and then a wide field 



THE SEVASTOPOL SKETCHES 85 

may be opened before you. You have begun in such a 
way as to compel the most cautious to cherish high expec- 
tations. 

"But I have wandered afield from the purpose of my 
letter. I offer you no consolation in telling — what is 
true — that the printed fragments of your article are 
greatly esteemed by many; yet to those who know the 
article in its real form they are nothing but a string of 
phrases without sense or inner meaning. But it was 
unavoidable. I must tell you that it would not have been 
published in this form had it not been made compulsory. 
Your name is not signed to it, however. 

"'The Wood-cutting Expedition' passed the censor 
fairly well, though a few precious observations were cut 
out. My opinion of the article is as follows: it may in 
form resemble Turgenief but there the resemblance ends; 
all the rest is yours and no one else could have written it. 
In that sketch are many astonishingly keen observations, 
and it is entirely new, interesting and pertinent. Do not 
neglect the doing of such sketches. Our literature has 
not as yet produced anything but trivialities regarding the 
common soldier. You are a pioneer in the subject and 
whatever you choose to tell us on the subject as you know 
it will be extremely interesting and useful. " 

Tolstoi won international fame by the Sevastopol 
Sketches. He had the gift of making the picture live. 
He cast no poetic glamor over the horrors of actual war. 
He makes you see the pathos of the young soldier struck 
down by the hostile bullet or shattered by the bursting 
bomb and dying on the jolting improvised ambulance 
even while the songs of his comrades drunk with battle 
fury ring out as they hasten gladly back to their barracks 
through the dim mists of the early morning. He makes 
the reader realize the actual spirit of the army, not the 
chanticleer self-importance of the officer who thinks that 
the men are conquering through his foresight and en- 
couragement but rather the self-sacrifice of the mass of 



86 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

untheatrical heroes whose names never appear in the 
histories. He is a Rembrandt-etcher, suggesting the life, 
by a few masterly, massive, firm strokes of the pen, and 
yet again elaborating the soldier with the fullest detail, 
the character of this man or that picked out with all the 
minuteness of a Meissonier of words: their vices, their 
heroisms, their whims, their vanities. There is no ideal- 
ism of the military calling even in those pictures of the 
Caucasus, where if ever idealism might be expected, for 
the Caucasus is the very haunt of poetry, the beloved 
exile of the Pushkins and Lermontofs. No, it is the 
stern reality, the trials, the privations, the pitiless death, 
the ghastly wounds. War is apostrophized not as a 
glorious goddess, crowned with laurel, but as a demon, 
her stern face frowning and distorted and bearing in her 
hand the smoking rifle and the dissecting-knif e, while pale 
Death lurks in her train. 

This is what dominates all the Military Sketches, and 
especially those of " Sevastopol." There is self- analysis; 
motives are exposed to the clear light of reality; it is seen 
how the bravest in outward semblance are inwardly de- 
voured by that fear of death which is instinctive in every 
human being, nay, in every animal. And against the 
grandiose background of roaring cannon, bursting bombs, 
exploding magazines, burning ships, dismantled houses, 
there stand, occupying the foreground to the exclusion of 
the mighty and the so-called heroic, the pettiness and 
triviality of life: the jealousies and ambitions, the vani- 
ties and meannesses of the highest. While men are dying 
all around, the general is concerned about the fit of a 
collar, the grooming of his horse, the prospect of the 
George. 



XIII 

MILITARY LIFE 

TolstoI struck a new note in Russian literature, but 
he told Paul Boyer that he was greatly indebted to Marie- 
Henri Beyle, who, writing under the pseudonym of Sten- 
dhal, taught him to understand war. " Re-read the de- 
scription of the Battle of Waterloo in l La Chartreuse de 
Panne,'" he says. "Who ever before him so described 
war? — that is to say, described it as it is in reality ?" 
Tolstoi's brother Nikolai used to declare that the 
popular romantic view of war was all embellishment, 
whereas in real war there is no embellishment, and 
Tolstoi assured Boyer that he had a grand chance in the 
Crimea to see with his own eyes that such was the case. 
That is what he taught the world in his Sevastopol Sketches 
and that was what the censor refused to have promulgated. 

But while he was producing these great works of litera- 
ture, the promise of still greater things to come, he was 
living the old conventional life with his aristocratic com- 
rades, occasionally indulging in wild orgies, and, as we 
have seen, wasting his substance at cards. More than 
once he was exposed to death, especially while he was 
under the concentrated fire directed by the allies against 
the Fourth or, as the history calls it, "The Flagstaff 
Bastion. " On the sixteenth of August he was present in 
the battle of the Tchornaya or Black River, but as he 
wrote his brother three days later he was not hurt: "I 
did nothing, as my mountain artillery was not called upon 
to fire." 

This was the last attempt to relieve the city, and it was 
a failure. On the eighth of September, while stationed 

87 



88 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

at Star Battery on the north side of the roadstead, Tolstoi 
witnessed the capture of the Malakhof or Kornilof redoubt 
by the French. He described it with vivid touches in 
" Sevastopol in August" — the troops like dark spots 
moving down the hill from the French batteries, the dark 
stripes flying toward the Russian line, the white cloudlets 
bursting in succession as if chasing one another, the 
musketry like the beating of hail against a window, and 
then the combination of all the puffs of smoke into a 
violet cloud, dotted with tiny faint lights and black spots, 
and curling and twisting while all the peals of cannon and 
the rattling of small arms blended into one tremendous 
clamor. 

The loss of the Malakhof necessitated the abandon- 
ment of Sevastopol, and the Russians destroyed such war 
material as they could not take with them. Tolstoi was 
detailed to clear two of the bastions. The Russians 
crossed the roadstead by a pontoon bridge and took up 
their quarters on the north side. 

While he was thus exposed to danger he wrote a prayer 
of thanksgiving : — . 

" Lord, I thank thee for Thy constant protection. How 
surely thou leadest me to what is good. What an insig- 
nificant creature should I be, if Thou wert to abandon 
me. Leave me not, O Lord! Give me what I need, not 
that I may satisfy my poor desires, but that I may attain to 
the eternal, mighty object of existence, unknown to me, 
beyond my ken." 

Another time he expressed himself in verse which 
sounds like the wail of King Amfortas, or, perhaps, 
more like one of the Sufi imitations of Omar the Tent- 
maker : — 

" When shall I cease to waste my days on earth 
Without an aim or fervor, cease to feel 
The deep wound in my heart no skill may heal? 

Who made this wound? God only knows! From birth 

Have I been tortured by my lack of worth, 

While gloomy clouds of doubt my path conceal!" 



MILITARY LIFE 89 

At this time Tolstoi seems to have some drawing toward 
expression in verse. One of his comrades when an old 
man remembered with pleasure how in the trying times of 
siege he used to enliven and encourage the men in the 
battery with his stories and his improvised verses : — 

"He was indeed the life of our battery. When he 
was with us we did not notice how the time went and 
there was no end to the general gayety. When the count 
was not there, when he was absent at Simferopol, we were 
all downcast. He would be away for two or three days. 
. . . Then he would come back, the very picture of the 
Prodigal Son, gloomy, exhausted, dissatisfied with himself. 
He would take me to one side and make me his father 
confessor. He would tell me everything; how he had 
caroused and gambled, where he had spent his days and 
nights; and all the time, if you would believe it, he would 
blame himself and suffer as if he had been a real criminal. 
It was pitiful to witness his distress. That is the kind of 
man he was. In a word a peculiar chap, and to tell the 
truth I could not understand him; but he was a rare 
comrade, most honorable — a man one could never for- 
get." 

Kruizhanovsky, Commandant of the Artillery, had a 
piano in his rooms and some of the officers on his staff 
used to gather there almost every day. Tolstoi, Lieuten- 
ant-Colonel Balyuzek or some other musical man would 
drum out a jolly tune and the rest would sing impromptu 
verses. Thus arose the famous Sevastopol Song, consist- 
ing of nearly fifty stanzas relating various events of the war, 
showing up the incapacity of some of the chief generals, 
satirizing the two grand dukes, referring to the Emperor's 
death in most irreverent terms and expressing the dis- 
satisfaction generally felt at the failure of the Russian 
army, which was in large measure due to the system 
maintained by Nicholas. The music of this song was 
afterward written out by Count Sergyei' Tolstoi and was 
printed in one of the Russian magazines together with 



9 o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

the words, which are, of course, rather wretched 
doggerel, intermingled with slang and many expressions 
hardly suitable for polite ears. 

It is impossible to tell how much of this improvisation 
was due to Tolstoi. Not less than nine of the officers 
had a hand in it; but Tolstoi, who was now so well known 
as a rising young author, was one of them, the general 
opinion of the army attributed it to him, and the promo- 
tion which his connection with the Commander-in-chief 
and his well-proved gallantry would naturally have 
brought about was withheld from him. 

Another factor in the case was wholly to his credit. He 
was accused by some of his fellow-officers of practicing and 
preaching a superfluity of honesty. Great opportunities 
were afforded the commanders and sub-commanders to 
feather their own nests. Money was furnished them from 
the treasury for shoeing horses, buying medicines, and in 
general keeping up the service. It was an easy matter to 
overestimate the cost of commodities, to buy cheaper 
stores and charge up the highest prices. This was a 
characteristic method of Russian graft. Tolstoi found 
his company in possession of a considerable cash-balance. 
His sense of justice impelled him to declare it in his 
accounts. He might at least have lavished it on extra 
luxuries for the staff. But he refused to do so and this 
brought him into disfavor with those who had his fate in 
their hands. 

Failure to receive promotion was a keen disappoint- 
ment to him but, like most of the disappointments of life, 
worked wholly for his advantage in the long run. Army 
life, even varied by the writing of military sketches, was 
not to be his vocation. What it was really to be is hinted 
at in a brief but pregnant entry in his diary : — 

U A conversation about religion and faith suggested to 
me a great, a stupendous idea, to the realization of which 
I feel that I am capable of devoting my life. This idea is 
to establish a new religion suited to the present state of 



MILITARY LIFE 91 

mankind— the religion of Jesus but purified from dogma 
and mysticism, a practical religion, not promising future 
bliss, but giving bliss on earth. I realize that this can be 
accomplished only by generations consciously working 
toward it. One generation will hand on the idea to the 
next and, some day, enthusiasm or reason will accomplish 
it. Deliberately to promote the union of mankind by 
means of religion is the basic principle of the idea, which I 
hope will command my enthusiasm. " 

This colossal idea, still inchoate in his mind, came to 
him just after one of his deepest plunges into dissipation, 
and while still the cloud of gloom hung heaviest over his 
mind. In the fierce fire of human passions the weak soul 
perishes; the strong soul at last emerges chastened. 
Occasionally, as one sees the forms of pottery in the 
furnace, amid the dazzling flames, one may get some hint 
of what that strong soul will be. 

Practical experience made Tolstoi detest war — that 
"game of life and death." He had little faith in "trav- 
erses, breastworks, cunningly interwoven trenches, 
mines, and cannon piled tier on tier/' so intricate that he 
lost his way among them; w r hen he was ordered to clear 
the bastions, he felt that he was superfluous: "the non- 
commissioned officers could have done the work just as 
well without him." He was convinced of the disorderli- 
ness and confusion of it; if he, in midst of it all could see no 
solution of the riddle, then it was also still more likely 
that the general-in-chief, at a distance, had no control of 
the forces once they were set loose. It w r ould have 
undoubtedly been a method just as equitable and 
satisfactory and far more economical as well as humane 
to decide who should hold the city by submitting the 
question to Prince L. D. Urusof's scheme of arbitrament. 

Tolstoi was one evening sitting with Count Osten- 
Saken's adjutants when the Prince came into the room 
and asked to speak to the Commander. After he had 
passed out, looking very much crestfallen, Tolstoi was 



92 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

informed that he had proposed that a challenge to a game 
of chess for the foremost trench in the front of the Fifth 
Bastion should be sent to the English. Urusof was a 
champion chess-player and half a dozen years later had 
his chance to play with the English in the international 
tournament in London. Osten-Saken, being conven- 
tional, preferred to sacrifice lives and powder. 

A hair-balance loaded with rival grains of sand decides 
which arm kicks the beam as accurately as the most co- 
lossal weighing machine, and two champions, even a 
David and Goliath, might just as fairly decide a war as two 
armies of ten million men and corresponding forces pitted 
against each other. Superior might never connotes justice. 

Tolstoi began by depicting war in all its grim realism; 
he knew that he was expected to paint it in the conven- 
tional colors. But then, as later, it was not after all so 
much the suffering and death as it was the effect on men's 
souls that appalled him. 

"What is needed is not the Red Cross but the simple 
cross of Christ to destroy falsehood and deception. " 

After the retreat from Sevastopol, Tolstoi's literary 
skill was employed in collating the reports of the action. 
He says of this work: — 

"The commander of the Artillery, Kruizhanovsky, 
sent me the reports of the officers from all the bastions 
and requested me to compose an account from more than 
twenty of them. I regret that I did not keep a copy of 
them. They were a capital example of that naive, in- 
evitable military falsehood which goes to make up descrip- 
tions. I think that many of those comrades of mine who 
drew up those reports will chuckle on reading these lines, 
as they recall how by their commander's order they wrote 
of what they could not know. " 

When this account was completed, he was sent as a 
courier to Petersburg with despatches. This practically 
ended his military career. He reached the capital on the 
third of December, 1855. 



PART II 

TOLSTOI THE WRITER 

I 
IN LITERARY CIRCLES AT PETERSBURG 

In his "Confession" Tolstoi says: — 

"At the age of twenty-six, at the close of the war, I 
went to Petersburg and made the acquaintance of the 
authors of the day. I met with a warm reception and 
abundant flattery." 

There was a new ferment in Russia at the time. 
Alexander II. was yielding to the reaction that followed 
the end of his father's despotic reign. It was as if a great 
volume of oxygen had been poured into a room where 
all life had been asphyxiated by the deadly fumes of car- 
bon dioxide. Now there was to be at least some meas- 
ure of freedom — freedom of expression, freedom of the 
press. 

The new editors of the Sovremennik had gathered 
around them nearly all the rising writers of Russia and 
put them under implicit agreement to write only for that 
periodical. On one occasion Turgenief, in the kindness 
of his big heart, agreed to contribute an article to Profes- 
sor Mikhail N. Katkof's review but failed to keep his 
promise. Katkof indignantly published to the w r orld his 
statement of Turgeniefs duplicity. Tolstoi, always 
ready for a controversy, took Turgeniefs part, asserting 
that his gentle nature and politeness had induced him to 
make promises to both parties. He urged Katkof to 
publish his letter. Katkof agreed but sent Tolstoi a 

93 



94 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

draft of his rejoinder: it was of such a nature that Tolstoi 
decided it would have been better policy not to interfere. 

He was of a nature too independent to make himself 
very popular with the ardent liberals, who were now 
all aglow for reform of the old evils. He made their 
acquaintance, but he was not the man to subordinate 
himself to any social scheme. He was outspoken, 
especially in opposition to what other people upheld; he 
lacked tact and was bound always to take the other side; 
he liked to set men by the ears. 

An example of this trait is given by Dmitry Vasilyevitch 
Grigorovitch — sometimes called "The Beecher Stowe 
of Russia" — in his "Literary Reminiscences. " He had 
met Tolstoi in Moscow and was surprised to find him keep- 
ing permanent quarters in Petersburg, which he detested. 
Grigorovitch accompanied him to dine with the editorial 
staff of the Sovremennik, very few of whom he as yet 
knew. "On the way," he says, "I warned him to be 
careful not to touch on certain subjects and particularly 
not to say anything against George Sand, whom he greatly 
disliked, as she was then the idol of most of the mem- 
bers. The dinner passed off uneventfully. Tolstoi was at 
first silent, but at last he could not refrain from speaking. 
When some one praised George Sand's new novel, he 
abruptly broke out in a tirade against her, declaring that if 
the heroines of her novels existed in reality they ought to 
be tied to the hangman's cart and driven through the 
streets of the city. 

Grigorovitch goes on to say that Tolstoi was moved to 
this petulance partly by his irritation with everything 
connected with Petersburg, but mainly because of his 
habit of contradicting. "Whatever opinion may have 
been expressed, the greater the authority of the speaker, 
the more he would insist on maintaining an opposite 
judgment and making a sharp retort. " 

His very manner of listening, of fixing his eyes on a 
speaker and of screwing up his lips sarcastically, gave the 



IN LITERARY CIRCLES 95 

impression that what he desired was to puzzle and sur- 
prise. 

Grigorovitch tells how he was once present when Tol- 
stoi' and Turgenief were having a heated discussion. 
"Turgenief," he says, "was pacing back and forth mani- 
festing great embarrassment. Tolstoi was lying on the 
divan and his excitement was so great that I had great 
difficulty in calming him and taking him home. " 

The two great writers were at swords' points whenever 
they met. But while Turgenief tried to avoid Tolstoi', 
Tolstoi' would follow Turgenief from place to place "like 
a love-sick woman." Turgenief told how the count 
came straight from Sevastopol, stopped at his house and 
then and there began to plunge into dissipation — with 
carousals, gypsies and card-playing all night, and then a 
drunken sleep until the next afternoon. 

The poet Afanasy Afan£syevitch Shenshin, better 
known as Fyet, who afterward bought an estate 
near Yasnaya Polyana and became one of Tolstoi's 
most intimate friends, tells of his first meeting with 
him: — 

"Turgenief used to get up very early and take his tea 
in the Petersburg fashion, and during my brief stay in the 
city I called every morning about ten to have a quiet chat 
with him. On the second morning when Zakhar opened 
the door I saw in the hall a dress sword adorned with the 
ribbon of St. Anne. 

"' Whose sword is that?' I asked as I went to the 
drawing-room. 

"'If you please, come this way,' said Zakh&r in a low 
voice, pointing to the left of the corridor. 'That is 
Count Tolstoi's sword; he is asleep in the drawing-room. 
Ivan Sergeyevitch is drinking tea in the library. ' 

" During the hour I spent with Turgenief we conversed 
in low tones, for fear of waking Tolstoi. ..." 

Fyet, who had not heard of Tolstoi before, noticed as 
soon as they were introduced his instinctive antagonism to 



96 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

all accepted opinions and how Turgenief was made 
desperate by Tolstoi's cutting sarcasms. Finally Tur- 
genief cried, in his high falsetto voice, which always took 
a higher pitch as he got more and more excited: — 

"Our banner is not for you. Go to the Princess 
B 's." 

"Why should I ask you where I am to go?" growled 
Tolstoi. 

Fyet was not much interested in their controversies 
but gathered from what the others said that Tolstoi 
was right and that those who were suffering from the 
political situation would have found it difficult to de- 
scribe their ideals and formulate their wants. Tolstoi 
found in their magniloquence only "empty talk. " 

On another occasion Turgenief exasperated Tolstoi by 
making a great to-do about a sore throat. Turgenief's 
voice grew squeakier and squeakier and pressing his hands 
to his throat with the eyes of a dying gazelle he whispered, 
"I cannot talk any more; I shall have bronchitis." 

"Bronchitis!" sneered Tolstoi; "that's an imaginary 
ailment. Bronchitis is a metal. " 

He was lying on a leather sofa in the middle of the room 
and was sulking. Turgenief, with his hands in his pockets 
spreading out his coat-tails, was striding up and down 
the three rooms. Grigorovitch approached the sofa and 
said: — 

"My dear Tolstoi, don't get excited. You have no 
idea how highly he esteems and loves you. " 

Tolstoi with dilated nostrils exclaimed, "I will not allow 
him to act so spitefully toward me. There he keeps 
marching in front of me wagging his democratic rump." 

"Tolstoi," remarked Turgenief to his friend Garshin, 
" early developed a trait of character, which was the basis 
of his gloomy view of life and caused him much suffering. 
He never believes in men's sincerity. Any kind of 
emotion seems false to him and he fixes those whom he 



IN LITERARY CIRCLES 97 

suspects of insincerity with his extraordinary piercing 
eyes. " 

Turgenief went on to say that he had never in his life 
experienced anything more depressing than the effect of 
that penetrating glance, which, combined with two or 
three venomous remarks, could rouse almost to madness 
any one who had no great self-control. Turgenief him- 
self, usually self-possessed and serene, was exasperated to 
the last degree by him. 

Outwardly they were interested in the same great 
movement but as soon as they came together they began 
to quarrel. A lady of that time and intimate in their 
circle said that she had never heard Tolstoi express his 
opinion of Turgenief or of any of the other authors, 
whereas Turgenief was always making remarks about 
every one. Of Tolstoi he declared that there was not a 
word, not a movement, that was natural. "He is all the 
time posing and I am at a loss to understand in such an 
intelligent man that foolish pride in his wretched title 
of count. " 

On another occasion, when Tolstoi' had been relating 
certain interesting episodes which had taken place during 
the war, Turgenief remarked after Tolstoi had taken his 
departure : — 

"You may boil a Russian officer for three days in 
strong soapsuds, but you won't rid him of the braggadocio 
of a Junker; you may cover him with the thick veneer of 
culture — still his brutality will show through." And he 
added, "And only to think that at the bottom of all that 
brutality lies merely the desire to get promoted. " 

On this occasion Turgenief expressed himself so 
strongly that even Panayef charged him w T ith being jeal- 
ous and the conversation ended with heated words. Pa- 
nayef flung himself out of the room and Turgenief, very 
much excited, demanded of Nekrasof if it could be sup- 
posed he was jealous of Tolstoi's title. 

Nekrasof had difficulty in calming him. 



98 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

There were occasional rifts of sunshine in the stormy 
sky; but for the most part Tolstoi and Turgenief, the two 
greatest writers of their day, were antipathetic, and 
indeed the tension between them became so strained 
that, as we shall see, a duel was several times narrowly 
averted. 

Tolstoi's spirit of contradiction was manifested all his 
days, but it was especially rampant during his brief sojourn 
in Petersburg. 

G. P. Danilyevsky, author of highly esteemed historical 
romances, relates how Tolstoi once entered a drawing-room 
where some one was reading aloud a newly published 
work by the famous revolutionist, Aleksandr Ivanovitch 
Herzen. " Quietly taking his place behind the reader's 
chair he waited till the reading was finished and then at 
first softly and shyly but growing bolder and more heated 
he attacked Herzen and the enthusiasm with which his 
writings were accepted." There must have been reason 
as well as eloquence in his words, for Danilyevsky declares 
that henceforth Herzen's writings were banished from 
that house. 

Thus he blazed his way through Russian society, 
attacking the ideals which the men of that fermenting 
epoch were trying rather to formulate than to attain; he 
found these reformers lacking in that self-control which he 
blamed in himself, and it is human nature to dislike our 
own faults the most when they are detected in others. 
Theoretically he worshiped Truth, and he never hesi- 
tated to promulgate the truth, in whatever form it might 
seem to him at a given time to take. This habit often 
involved him in contradictions, not only with himself, but 
even more frequently with others. 

The climate of Petersburg may have had something to 
do with his irritability. He had conceived the notion 
that he was doomed to consumption. Later when Tur- 
genief had heard that he was ill he wrote in one of his 



IN LITERARY CIRCLES 99 

letters, perhaps with a sly reference to Tolstoi's theory that 
bronchitis was a disease of the imagination: — 

U I have heard of your illness and was sorry; but now I 
beg of you drive the thought of it out of your head. For 
you too have your fancies and are possibly thinking of 
consumption — but God knows you have nothing of the 
sort." 

It was not strange that he should have felt some appre- 
hensions; his favorite brother Nikolai, perhaps owing to 
the fact that he had fallen into habits of intoxication in 
the Caucasus, was showing the first symptoms of lung 
trouble; and his brother Dmitry, whom he generally called 
by the diminutive form Mitenka, was desperately ill. He 
reluctantly went to Orel to visit him. Dmitry was to him 
the least sympathetic of his brothers. He remembered 
very little about him as a boy. When their father's 
property was divided among them, Dmitry received the 
estate of Shcherbatchova in the province of Kursk. A 
note which he wrote divulged his opinions regarding the 
possession of serfs, over whose morals he very seriously, 
naively, and sincerely felt that he must have an oversight, 
and consequently he treated them to a severe system of 
punishments. After graduating from the University he 
at first intended to enter the civil service, but became 
discouraged and returned to Kursk, where he took up 
some local work. 

Tolstoi in his " Reminiscences" says that Dmitry led a 
sternly abstemious life for a time, indulging in neither 
wine nor in tobacco and keeping aloof from women. But 
after he had reached the age of twenty-six he fell under 
the influence of a very seductive and immoral man, and 
suddenly began to drink, smoke, and waste his money, 
going with loose women. He had taken into his house a 
prostitute from a brothel and in accordance with the seri- 
ous religious views that he still professed, regarded her as 
his wife. But the period of dissipation, which lasted some 



ioo THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

months, had undermined his health and he contracted 
consumption. 

Tolstoi' was shocked at his emaciated appearance when 
he saw him at Orel: "It could be seen how his enormous 
hand joined on the two bones of his lower arm; his face 
was all eyes, and they were the same beautiful grave eyes 
with their piercing expression of question in them. He 
was constantly coughing and spitting but was loth to die 
and reluctant to believe that he was dying. Poor pock- 
marked Masha, whom he had rescued, was with him, 
wearing a neckerchief, and nursed him. In my presence 
a wonder-working ikon was brought to him. I re- 
member the expression of his face when he prayed to it." 

Readers of "Anna Karenina" will recollect how Levin 
visited his dying brother under similar conditions. 

Tolstoi continues: "I was particularly detestable at 
that time. I . . . was full of conceit. I felt sorry 
for Mitenka, but not very sorry. I made him a hurried 
visit but did not stay at Orel." 



n 

AN EXPERIMENTAL LOVE-AFFAIR 

The news of his brother's death reached Tolstoi about 
the middle of the following February (1856), and he says he 
believed that what troubled him most was that it prevented 
him from taking part in some private theatricals then being 
got up at Court! 

After the Crimean War was officially ended and Russia 
had made peace with her enemies, Tolstoi became 
wearied of "this damned Petersburg": he w r rote his 
brother Sergyei that he was proposing to go abroad 
for eight months. He suggested that Nikolai and 
Sergyei should each take a thousand rubles and they 
should all make the trip together. He had apparently 
put in his application for leave to travel, for after ex- 
pressing his dissatisfaction with his story of "The Bliz- 
zard," he wrote: — 

"At all events, whether I am to be allowed or not to go 
abroad, I intend to take leave of absence in April and go 
to the country." 

Thither he went early in June, and, as he wrote his 
brother, spent ten days in Moscow very pleasantly, with- 
out champagne or gypsies. He paused on the way at 
Pokrovskoye, the home of his boyhood flame, the Islenyeva 
who had married Dr. Behrs, a Russian of German origin. 
He was delighted with the children. "What dear, merry 
little girls ! " he exclaimed. 

He spent the summer at Yasnaya Polyana and here 
began, not indeed the first of Tolstoi's love-affairs, but the 
most serious. Living on an estate at Sudakovo, not far 
from Yasnaya, was a gentleman, one of w T hose three 

101 



io2 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

daughters figures in his published letters as V. V. A. 
Her full name has not been disclosed. They met in 
Moscow; even then he hinted to his brother that he 
was "a little bit in love." She was visiting an aunt 
whose position gave her entree into exclusive court 
circles. During the summer they had frequent oppor- 
tunities of renewing the acquaintance and they soon 
became attached. Early in September she went to Mos- 
cow with her aunt, her sisters, her cousins, and the 
French governess, to attend the festivities at the coronation 
of Alexander II. A lively correspondence ensued. She 
expressed her rapture at the brilliancy of the spectacle and 
the gayeties of high life. His replies showed his disap- 
pointment at her indifference toward the serious things 
that interested him. He did not hesitate to upbraid her 
for caring for objects unworthy of her — balls, parades, 
light conversations with conceited young officers. He 
did not hesitate to say sarcastic words about the fashion- 
able people with whom she found so much pleasure in 
associating. 

Probably his view of life was somewhat darkened from 
the fact that about this time he was seriously ill. Two 
doctors came and prescribed the application of innumer- 
able leeches. He still imagined that he was afflicted with 
symptoms of consumption, but he recovered sufficiently to 
go hunting with his brother; and when the young lady 
returned to Sudakovo, having pardoned him for what 
she evidently considered his impertinent aspersions on her 
pursuits, they went so far in their ardor as to justify their 
friends in reporting their engagement. 

He was by no means certain of himself and in order to 
test the strength of his love for her determined to return to 
Petersburg. At Moscow, in a most characteristic way, 
he wrote her a letter in which he discussed the question of 
sex attraction, insisted on the vast importance of marriage, 
and explained his reasons for putting their relationship 
to the test of a temporary separation. 



AN EXPERIMENTAL LOVE-AFFAIR 103 

After he reached Petersburg some kindly friend came 
to him with the story of a flirtation which V. V. A. had 
carried on at Moscow with her French music-master, 
Motier, during the coronation season. 

This further confirmed the doubts that were arising in 
his mind. On an impulse he wrote her a scathing letter, 
but repented before it went to the post. In other letters 
he referred to her conduct severely but kept on instruct- 
ing her as to his ideas regarding their future, their duties, 
their acquaintances, and their use of time, still assuming 
that they were to be married. 

Then later he informed her of his literary plans, de- 
scribed his life at Petersburg, and still further developed 
his lofty ideals of family happiness. 

During this visit to Petersburg he definitely severed his 
connection with the army. 

He had hardly arrived there before he was informed by 
General Konstantinof, the Commander of his division, 
that the Grand Duke Mikhail Aleksandrovitch had heard 
that he was the author of the Sevastopol Song and had 
taught it to the men, and was consequently very angry. 
Tolstoi made himself right with the Commander; but 
evidently it was felt to be necessary to punish some one, 
and the rising young author, whose Military Sketches had 
also roused criticism in high quarters, was the one to be 
sacrificed. 

He had private influence enough, however, to save the 
commander of his battery, Captain Korenitsky, from a 
court-martial trial. 

He had one consolation. His health was greatly 
restored: he wrote his brother that the only satisfactory 
thing was that he was well and that Dr. Shapulinsky had 
examined his lungs and found them perfectly sound. 

Tolstoi was followed to Petersburg by the young lady, 
who did not at all approve of his experiment in testing his 
affections. She knew well enough that proximity is the 
true secret of kindling love. He did not see her; he had 



104 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

gone to Moscow early in December. The one stick of 
kindling wood taken from the incipient fire quickly smoul- 
ders and goes out. Tolstoi wrote his Aunt Tatyana, who 
had great hopes of seeing him settle down, and who had 
reproached him for his treatment of the young lady : — 

"When I first went away and for a week following I 
thought I was in love, as it is called, but with an imagina- 
tion like mine that was not difficult. . . . Now, however, 
since I have set resolutely to work, I should like — I 
should very much like to say that I am in love with her, 
or simply that I love her, but such is not the case. 

"The only feeling I have for her is gratitude for her 
love: I think that of all the girls I have known or now 
know, she would have made me the best wife, as I under- 
stand married family life. 

"I want your unbiased opinion about this: Am I mis- 
taken or not? I want your advice because, in the first 
place, you know me and you know her, and principally 
because you love me and those that love are never in the 
wrong. 

"It is true, I have tested myself very unsatisfactorily, 
for ever since I left home I have been leading a solitary but 
not a dissipated life and I have seen very few women; but, 
nevertheless, I have had many moments of annoyance 
with myself for having entered into such a relationship 
with her and I have repented of it. 

"Yet I repeat that were I once convinced of the con- 
stancy of her nature and that she would always love me 
even though not as she does now but at least more than she 
loved any one else, I should not hesitate to marry her. I 
am confident that in that case my love for her would keep 
increasing and that through this feeling she would be- 
come a fine woman. " 

Such cool, calculating self -analysis is the antipodes of 
love. No wonder that she detected it in his letters, grew 
weary of his didactic, dictatorial tone, and forbade him to 
write her any more. 



AN EXPERIMENTAL LOVE-AFFAIR 105 

There was a further flickering of correspondence, how- 
ever, on both sides; she made one more effort to retain 
his love; he was at first moved by it, but it was only a 
temporary final glowing of the coals; he felt he had not 
treated her very fairly and properly apologized. The 
engagement came to its destined end. He wrote his 
aunt from Moscow : — 

"I have received my passport for abroad and I came 
to Moscow to spend a few days with Marie, to arrange 
my affairs and to take leave of you. 

"But I changed my mind, principally on Mashenka's 
advice, and I have decided to remain here, with her for a 
week or two and then to go straight to Paris by way of 
Warsaw. You probably understand, chere tante, why 
I do not wish and why it is not right for me to come at the 
present time to Yasnaya or rather to Sudakovo. It seems 
to me that I have behaved very badly in relation to V., 
but if I should see her now, I should be acting still worse. 
As I wrote you, I am more than indifferent to her and 
feel that I can no longer deceive either her or myself. 
But if I were to come, I might perhaps, from weakness 
of character, again deceive myself. 

" Do you remember, chere tante, how you derided me 
when I told you that I was going to Petersburg pour 
fn'eprouver — to test myself — but this very idea is respon- 
sible for my not having brought wretchedness on the 
young lady and myself, for do not imagine that this comes 
from inconstancy or lack of good faith; no one has taken 
my fancy during these two months; the fact is simply I 
saw that I was deceiving myself, that not only I never had 
but also I never could have the least feeling of true love 
for V. The only thing that gives me much pain is that I 
have done wrong to the young lady and that I shall not be 
able to take leave of you before my departure." 

His gentle aunt, disappointed at this outcome of a 
romance in which she felt a deep personal interest, was not 
satisfied with his explanations and charged him with 



106 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

having acted dishonorably. So did the young lady's 
friends; and the French governess, Mile. Vorgani, wrote 
him a severe letter calling him to account. Tolstoi again 
wrote his Aunt Tatyana : — 

" I see that we do not at all understand each other in re- 
gard to this affair. Though I confess that I have been to 
blame in having been inconstant and that everything 
might have happened quite differently, yet I feel that I 
have acted honorably. I have never ceased to say that I 
was not sure of the feeling that I felt for the young lady, 
but that it was not love and that I was desirous of testing 
myself. The experiment proved that I was mistaken in 
my feeling and I wrote to V. about it as plainly as I 
could. 

"From that time my relations with her have been so 
sincere that I am convinced that the memory of them will 
never be disagreeable to her in case she should be married, 
and that is why I wrote to her that I should like to hear 
from her. I do not see why a young man should neces- 
sarily either be in love with a girl and marry her or have 
no friendly relation with her; for in this case I have all the 
time preserved a high degree of friendship and sympathy 
for her. 

" If only Mile. V., who wrote me such a ridiculous letter, 
would kindly recollect all my conduct toward V. V. A. 
— how I did my best to come as seldom as possible and 
how she kept urging me to come more frequently and to 
enter into closer relations. 

" I understand her being vexed because a thing she had 
greatly desired has not been accomplished (perhaps I am 
more vexed about it than she is) but that is no reason for 
telling a man who has tried to act as well as he could, who 
has made sacrifices lest he should bring misery on others, 
that he is a svinya — a pig— and making every one think 
so. I am sure all Tula is persuaded that I am the great- 
est of monsters. " 

Somewhat later, when he heard that the young lady's 



AN EXPERIMENTAL LOVE-AFFAIR 107 

sister Olga was to be married, he again wrote in the same 
exculpatory strain : — 

11 1 never loved V. V. A. with a real love, but I allowed 
myself to be drawn into tasting the evil pleasure of in- 
spiring love in another, and this afforded me a pleasure 
which I had never known before. 

"The time I have spent away from her has proved to 
me that I have no longing to see her again, much less to 
marry her. I feel only fear at the thought of the duties I 
should be obliged to fulfill toward her without loving her, 
and this was the reason that I made up my mind to go 
away sooner than I intended. 

"I have behaved very ill; I have asked pardon of God, 
and I ask it of all those I have grieved, but it is impossible 
to repair matters, and now nothing in the world could 
make the thing begin anew. 

"I wish Olga all happiness; I am enchanted with her 
marriage, but I confess to you, chere tante, that, of all 
things in this world, what would give me the greatest 
pleasure would be to learn that V. was going to marry a 
man whom she loved, and who was worthy of her; for 
although I do not feel in the depths of my heart the slight- 
est love for her, I still regard her as a good and honorable 
girl." 

Apparently Tolstoi had confided in Turgenief regarding 
his entanglement in this unfortunate love-affair, for about 
the middle of December came a letter from Paris, where 
Turgenief himself was entangled in a far more unfortu- 
nate and disreputable affair. It said : — 

" I dare not speak to you about the subject you mention. 
These are delicate things; they are killed by a word 
before they are mature, but when they are mature a 
hammer cannot break them. God grant everything may 
come off successfully and well. It may bring you that 
spiritual equilibrium you needed so much when I first 
knew you. " 

In this same letter Turgenief confessed to Tolstoi that 



108 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

he could not be quite straightforward with him. Though 
he loved him as a man, and of course as an author for his 
writings, yet there were many things, he said, which jarred 
on him. He hoped that their next meeting would be 
more agreeable. " Let us try again," he said, " to go hand 
in hand — perhaps we shall succeed better, for strange as 
it may sound, my heart warms to you as to a brother when 
we are a distance apart and I am very fond of you. In a 
word, I love you — that is certain. " 

Tolstoi evidently answered that letter in a similar 
spirit, for Turgenief three weeks later tells Tolstoi of 
finding it at the poste restante, and after an implied re- 
proach for not knowing his Paris address he goes on to 
say: — 

" You can imagine how pleased I was to read it. Your 
sympathy gladdened me deeply and sincerely. Moreover, 
a mild, clear and friendly peaceableness breathed from 
the whole letter. It remains for me to hold out my hand 
from across 'the gulf/ which has long since become a 
hardly perceptible crack about which we will say no 
more — it is not worth it. " 

Three days earlier Turgenief had written to Druzhinin, 
the translator of Shakespeare: — 

"I am told you are very intimate with Tolstoi and he is 
now become quite serene and pleasant. I am very glad. 
When that new wine ceases fermenting, it will yield a 
beverage fit for the gods. " 

It is rather odd that this change of mood took place 
while Tolstoi was in the very storm-center of this experi- 
mental love-affair. While he was still in Petersburg he 
wrote in his diary under date of January 16, 1857: — 

"I dined at Botkin's with Panayef alone; he read from 
Pushkin to me. I went into Botkin's library and wrote 
a letter to Turgenief; then I sat down on the divan and 
wept causeless but blissful tears. I am positively happy 
all these days — intoxicated with the rapid progress of my 
moral development." 



AN EXPERIMENTAL LOVE-AFFAIR 109 

As his son, Lyof Lvovitch, has said, Tolstoi all his life 
was pursuing happiness. It was a will-o'-the-wisp. If 
he did not find it in one direction, he would alter his 
course and see it still ahead of him, beckoning him on. 
Here is one of his rules for securing it. This was written 
in the preceding May, while he was still in Petersburg: — 

"A mighty means of securing true happiness in life is 
to spin out in all directions, without any rules, like a 
spider, a complete web of love and catch in it all that you 
can — old women and young children, policemen." 



Ill 



FIRST JOURNEY ABROAD 

Turg£nief in his letter from Paris warned Tolstoi' not to 
allow himself to be too much influenced by Druzhinin, 
with whom he had heard that he had become very inti- 
mate. " When I was of your age," he said, " only men of 
enthusiastic natures influenced me; but you are differently 
constituted, and perhaps, too, times are changed. " 

Tolstoi sent Druzhinin the now-completed manuscript 
of " Youth" for his criticism. The criticism was favor- 
able, but it certainly pointed out some of Tolstoi's most 
notable defects. He wrote : — 

"Twenty sheets should be written about ' Youth.' I 
read it with wrath, with yells and oaths; not on account 
of its lack of literary worth, but owing to the copy-books 
in which it is written and the handwritings. This mix- 
ing together of two different handwritings distracted my 
attention and hindered an intelligent perusal. It was as 
if two voices were shouting in my ear and purposely 
confusing me, and I know that the impression I received 
is not so complete as it should have been. Nevertheless, 
I will say what I can. 

"Your task was tremendous, but you have accom- 
plished it well. No other writer could have so grasped 
and depicted the agitated intangible period of youth. 
Cultured people will derive great enjoyment from your 
' Youth'; if any one tells you it is inferior to 'Childhood' 
and 'Boyhood,' you may spit in his face. There is a 
world of poetry in your work; all the first chapters are 
excellent, but the introduction is dry, until you come to 
the description of spring and the removal of the double 
windows. . . . Many chapters breathe the poetic 

no 



FIRST JOURNEY ABROAD in 

charm of old Moscow, which no one has ever before re- 
produced properly. Some chapters are too long and 
prosy. The recruiting of Semyonof will not pass the 
censor. 

"You must not be afraid of indulging in reflections: 
they are all clever and original; but you are inclined to 
analyze too minutely, which might become a great defect. 
You must restrain this tendency, but on no account sup- 
press it. All your work in analysis should be done in this 
way. Every one of your defects has elements of force and 
beauty; almost every one of your qualities contains the 
seed of a defect. 

"Your style corresponds to your matter. You are 
unliterary to a marked degree. Sometimes your illiteracy 
is that of a word-coiner or of a great poet who is forever 
reforming a language in his own way, or again w T ith the 
illiteracy of an officer who sits in a casemate and writes 
to a friend. It may be said with assurance that all that 
you have written with love for it is admirable, but as 
soon as you grow cold, your words entangle themselves 
and fiendish forms of language make their appearance. 
Consequently the parts written coldly should be revised 
and corrected. I tried to improve a few passages, but I 
gave it up; only you can accomplish this task, and you 
must. Above all avoid long sentences. Chop them into 
two or three, . . . don't be afraid of periods. ... Be 
unceremonious with particles and cut out by dozens the 
relatives which, who, and that; they should be struck out 
by tens. When in difficulty, take a sentence and imagine 
that you want to say it to some one in a fluent, conver- 
sational way." 

He suggested that it might be well to add a few amus- 
ing anecdotes, so as to make it reach the understanding of 
the masses, and he ended his long criticism with the not 
particularly enthusiastic remark, "You have not made 
a long stride in any new direction in this work, but you 
have shown what is in you and what you can do. " 



ii2 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Turgenief, who had heard that "Youth" was completed, 
congratulated him and said: — 

" If you do not turn aside from your path — and there is 
no reason why you should — you will go far in it. I wish 
you health, activity and freedom — spiritual freedom." 

It is odd that Turgenief s later opinion about this three- 
part romance practically coincided with Tolstoi's own 
judgment of it, expressed a half-century afterward. 
Turgenief in a letter to a friend said that he advised 
Madame Viardot to take it up for her Russian lesson as 
"a classical production of its kind," but as he reread it he 
suddenly decided that this celebrated story was simply 
wretched "small potatoes" and superannuated belief. 
The discovery distressed him and he wondered if it was 
because he had grown old and stupid. 

Tolstoi grew to regret that he had written the stories — ■ 
they were so artificially and insincerely written. " It 
could not be otherwise," he argued; "first, because what 
I aimed at was not to write my own story but that of my 
youthful friends, and this brought about an awkward 
mixture of their childhood and mine; and secondly, 
because at the time they were w r ritten I was far from 
independent in my manner of expressing myself, being 
strongly influenced by two writers: Sterne ('The Senti- 
mental Journey ') and Topffer (' La Bibliotheque de mon 

Oncle')." 

"I am now," he went on to say, "especially dissatisfied 
with the last two parts, ' Boyhood' and * Youth, ' in which 
there is an awkward mixture of truth and invention as 
well as insincerity — the desire to put forward as good and 
important what I did not then consider good and impor- 
tant, that is to say, a democratic tendency. " 

Tolstoi mentions among the other books that had a 
"very great influence" upon him at this period Goethe's 
"Hermann and Dorothea," Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame 
de Paris," and translations of Plato's Phaedo and the 
Symposium, and Homer, while that of the poems of Kolt- 



FIRST JOURNEY ABROAD 113 

sof, Tiutchef and Fy6t was merely "great." Nowhere 
does he mention Turgenief as affecting his style or his 
thought. But Turgenief, in one of the letters already 
cited, says: — 

" I suppose you will not like my c Faust ' very w r ell. My 
writings may have pleased you and perhaps influenced 
you in some w r ay, but only up to the time when you 
became quite independent. You do not need to study 
me now: you would only see the difference in our styles, 
my mistakes and omissions. What you have to do is to 
study man, your own heart and the really great writers. 
I am a writer of a transition period and am useful only to 
men in a transition state." 

Turgenief, always generous and just, had this to say 
of "A Proprietor's Morning," which came out in Decem- 
ber, 1856: — 

"I was exceedingly pleased with its sincerity and well- 
nigh complete freedom of outlook. I say 'well-nigh/ 
because there is still concealed in the way he has under- 
taken the task a certain amount of prejudice, perhaps 
without his being conscious of it. 

"The principal moral impression produced by the 
story — apart from the artistic impression — is that as 
long as serfdom exists, the two sides cannot possibly draw 
together, however disinterested and honorable the desire 
to do so may be. This impression is w r ise and true. But 
side by side with it, like a horse galloping beside a trotter, 
is another; that any general attempt to instruct and im- 
prove the condition of the peasantry is futile; this im- 
pression is unpleasant. But his command of language, 
his telling of the story, and his character-painting are 
great." 

Druzhinin's influence, against which Turgenief warned 
him, — certainly the latter 's advice to cut his sentences 
short, — did not prevent Tolstoi from beginning his " Deka- 
brists " several years later with one of the longest sentences 
ever written. It is well worth reading, for it depicts with 



ii 4 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

biting irony the ferment of thought and ambition that was 
stirring in Russian society after the mortifying failure of 
the Crimean War. It also shows Tolstoi's own attitude 
toward the new life of liberalism which soon compelled 
the enfranchisement of the serfs. 

Before Tolstoi left Petersburg permanently he took a 
prominent part in helping to found the Authors' and 
Students' Aid Society, known as the " Literary Fund." He 
tells in his diary of drafting the project at Druzhinin's. 

Though he was always blaming himself for his moral 
weakness in yielding to the temptations that peculiarly 
assailed him, he nevertheless held high the ideals of life 
and grew more and more disgusted with the discrepancy 
between the conduct of his associates — their luxurious 
dinners, their indulgence in costly wines, their hunting 
expeditions, their card-playing — and the love which they 
professed for Democracy and Progress. 

In his " Confession" he tells how with all his soul he 
wished to be good but was young, passionate and unsup- 
ported in his search for what was right. When he tried to 
express his sincere desire to be good and moral he met 
w r ith contempt and ridicule but was encouraged to join 
others in immoral actions. He paints a terrible and in a 
certain sense an exaggerated picture of his moral delin- 
quencies — how he killed men in battle, challenged them 
to duels with murderous intent, gambled, wasted the sub- 
stance wrung from faithful peasants, lied, robbed, com- 
mitted adultery, drank to excess, committed every kind 
of crime, and yet his friends approved of his life because 
it was the fashionable life of his class. 

He ascribes the motives of vanity, covetousness and 
pride to his literary undertakings, and in order to win 
money and fame he declares he neglected what was good 
and put forward what was evil. 

He blamed the authors of that time, who accepted him 
as one of themselves and flattered him, because they took 
a view of life which, by him adopted as was only natural, 



FIRST JOURNEY ABROAD 115 

blocked all his endeavors to grow better. Their theory 
was that wTiters — the poets and novelists, the artists and 
thinkers — were chiefly responsible for the development of 
civilization, that they were the chief teachers of mankind. 
He, being considered an excellent artist in words, found 
it very natural to accept their theories and so he tried to 
teach without knowing what he was teaching. Never- 
theless he was paid high wages and lived in luxury. He 
was a priest of the religion of progress and found it 
very pleasant and profitable. 

But after a time that kind of life began to pall on him. 
He began to doubt the infallibility of this pseudo-religion: 
the priests of it were not in accord among themselves ; they 
even quarreled and called one another names. Some of 
them seemed not to care which were right and which were 
wrong but merely fed their covetousness by taking advan- 
tage of all this activity. 

Then he made up his mind that the priests themselves — 
these writers — were immoral, were men of worthless 
character, even inferior to those whom he had met before 
in his military life — inferior because of their self-assur- 
ance and conceit. By getting out of sorts with them, he 
got out of sorts with himself and yet he still for years 
accepted their valuation of him as an artist, a poet and 
a teacher and consequently acquired an abnormally 
developed pride which he declared almost reached the 
state of insanity. Though none of them could answer 
the simplest of life's questions — what is good and what 
is evil — they all talked at the same time, not listening to 
one another, now praising, now reviling, often becoming 
angry — just as if they were in a lunatic asylum. 

He describes the poor printers as laboring — thousands 
of them — to the limit of their endurance to set the type 
and printing millions of words for the post to carry all 
over Russia, disseminating the teachings which they 
insisted must be respected and were terrible angry if 
they were neglected. 



n6 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

And the theory that they devised to justify such useless 
work and make them feel that they were the most impor- 
tant of men, was that all existence is developed by Culture 
and that Culture is measured by the circulation of books 
and newspapers. As they were highly paid for writing 
these books and newspapers, therefore they were the best 
and most useful of men. He concludes that there might 
have been some sense in this theory had they been all 
unanimous, but they were always disputing with one an- 
other from diametrically opposite standpoints. But as 
long as .they received money they went on writing and 
teaching and felt justified. 

All this is a serio-comic extravagant distortion, a pic- 
ture seen through eyes rendered somewhat astigmatic by 
time and distance. But doubtless Tolstoi even then was 
dissatisfied. 

Therefore, without any fixed program or purpose, he 
went abroad. 

Probably the attraction of Turgenief, who, as we have 
seen, complained that Tolstoi followed him about, 
brought him to Paris. He reached there by train from 
Warsaw on the sixth of March, 1857. Turgenief wrote 
Polonsky that a considerable change for the better had 
taken place in him and predicted that he would go far 
and leave a deep mark behind him. 

But the usual differences soon sprang up. He wrote 
Kalbasin of frequently seeing Tolstoi, but declared that 
he could not become -intimate with him — they took such 
different views. They went together to Dijon, and while 
there Tolstoi wrote the story of "Albert," which was 
probably originally suggested by the German musician 
Rudolf, whom he once brought to Yasnaya Polyana. 

On their return to Paris Tolstoi saw a man put to 
death by the guillotine. It made a deep impression on 
him. He wrote in his diary under date of April 18: 
"I rose before seven and went to see an execution. A 
stout, healthy neck and breast. The man kissed the Gos- 




Count L. N. Tolstoi, 1857. 



FIRST JOURNEY ABROAD 117 

pels, and then — death. How senseless! It made a deep 
impression which will not be wasted. I am not a man 
of politics. Morals and art I know and love — they are 
within my powers. The guillotine kept me long from 
sleeping and made me reflect." 

In the same way Thackeray, who in 1840 witnessed 
the execution of Courvoisier, the murderer of Lord 
William Russell, wrote of his revolt against murder, 
whether performed by a ruffian's knife or a hangman's 
rope, whether accompanied by a curse from the thief as 
he blows his victim's brains out or by a prayer from my 
lord on the bench in his wig and black cap. Later 
Thackeray revised his opinion about judicial executions, 
and came to regard such " sickly sentimentality" as 
wrong. 

On Tolstoi the execution made a lasting impression, 
as is proved by what he long afterward said in his 
" Confession," that the spectacle of the head and body 
thumping into the box caused him to understand with 
his whole being that no theory of the established order 
of things could justify such a deed, that it was wholly 
evil. It shook the foundation of his superstitious belief 
in what they all called Progress. 

He spent six weeks most delightfully in Paris, living 
at a pension where there were a score of friendly people 
of different nationalities. There were gay and lively 
jesting, conversation on every imaginable topic, dancing 
on the dusty carpet, till late at night. They flirted. 
They had their philosopher, their fighting-cock, their 
poet, their jester; there were a romantic Spanish countess, 
an Italian ablate, who declaimed Dante, an American 
doctor who boasted of his intimacy at court, a long-haired 
actor, a pianist who claimed to have composed the finest 
polka ever known, and a beautiful widow with three 
rings on each finger, and they all learned to know one 
another and influence one another. At least so he says 
in his story of "Lucerne." 



n8 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

He went from Paris to Geneva, and from there wrote 
to his aunt with enthusiasm of his visit at the French 
capital. He told her that he had not gone much into 
society or frequented the cafes and public entertainments, 
but he had found so much that was new and delightful 
that every day when he went to bed he said to himself, 
What a shame the time has sped so swiftly ! He expressed 
his commiseration for poor Turgenief, who, he said, was 
very ill physically and still worse morally. " His unfor- 
tunate liaison with Madame Viardot and his daughter 
keep him there in a climate which is ruinous for him, 
and it is pitiful to see him. I should never have believed 
that he could be so in love." 

With Druzhinin and V. P. Botkin he took a pedestrian 
tour through Piedmont and then settled down for a 
time at Clarens, in the village where Rousseau's Julie 
had lived (if we may trust his novel) just a century 
before. 

Tolstoi' was enraptured by the beauty of the country. 
He found it impossible to tear himself away from the 
lake and the shores where everything was full of blooming 
flowers. He spent a large part of his time in gazing and 
admiring, either while walking about or sitting at the 
window of his room. He could not sufficiently congratu- 
late himself at having come to Paris and spending the 
spring in such an enchanting region. 

In the notes that he made of this journey he tells how 
every morning and again in the evening after dinner he 
would open the shutters of his window and look out over 
the lake and at the distant blue mountains reflected in 
it, and their beauty would blind him and thrill him. It 
would cause him to melt with love for others, to yearn 
for their love, to indulge in regrets for the past and hope 
for the future, and to realize how good it was to be alive. 
Then would the thought of death come to him as some- 
thing poetic and fill him with awe, though it seemed far, 
far away. And the mere physical beauty of that delect- 



FIRST JOURNEY ABROAD 119 

able region would pour into his very soul, flooding it with 
wonderful impressions. 

Moreover, there was a charming society of cultivated 
Russians and he felt it in his inmost being that they for 
some occult reason had taken a great liking to him. At 
Beaucage, not far away, he found his relative, the 
Countess Aleksandra Tolstaya, freilina, or maid of 
honor, to the Grand Duchess Marya Nikolayevna. 

He had made the acquaintance of a Russian family 
living at Clarens and he invited their ten-year-old son, 
Sasha, to walk up the mountains w T ith him. They took 
the steamer from Clarens to Montreux. The weather 
was fine; the sun beat down perpendicularly; the lake, 
brilliant in colors and dotted w r ith motionless sail-boats, 
was like a mirror. It was a panorama of beauty. 

As they climbed up the mountain and heard the forest 
birds singing and smelled the damp freshness of the pines, 
Sasha w^as suddenly attracted by a meadow full of white 
narcissus and brought Tolstoi an enormous bunch of 
them; but Tolstoi could not help noticing how the lad, 
with the destructiveness natural to children, ran back 
to trample and tear their tender and beautiful young 
flowers. 

The next day they were still climbing up before the 
sun had as yet risen, though they could see its rays 
touching the peaks on the horizon. They were so far up 
that the sail-boats on the lake were mere dots and the 
lower stretches of the mountains of Savoy were blue 
like the lake, while the sun-lighted summits were a pallid 
pink. 

"It was a beautiful sight," he says, "beautiful beyond 
measure; but it is not Nature though it is good. I do not 
like what are called glorious and magnificent views — 
somehow they are cold. ... I like Nature when I seem 
to be a part of it, even though it surrounds me on all sides 
and stretches out into infinite distances. I like it when I 
am surrounded on all sides by the hot atmosphere and 



i2o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

when it rolls away into endless spaces and those very 
blades of tender grass I crush down as I sit on them melt 
into the green of boundless prairies; when those very 
leaves which as they stir in the breeze, make the shadows 
run across my face, blend with the purple of the far-off 
forest; when the very air that one breathes makes the 
deep azure of the limitless sky; when you are not alone in 
your exultation and your enjoyment of Nature, but all 
around you myriads of insects buzz and dance, and 
beetles, clinging together, crawl about, and all around you 
birds are pouring out their hearts in song. 

"But this is a bare, cold, desolate, gray plateau and 
yonder afar there is something veiled with mist and haze. 
But that something is so far away that I do not feel the 
chief delight of Nature — I do not feel that I am a 
part of this endless and beautiful distance; it is alien 
to me." 

This passage brings to mind the famous prose rhapsody 
of Gogol in "Dead Souls" — so ludicrously mistranslated 
in the current version — the wonderful apostrophe to 
Russia as seen by its sons in exile, beginning: "Russia! 
Russia! from the beautiful distance," and ending: "The 
thought of thine immensity is reflected powerfully in my 
mind and an unknown force penetrates the depths of my 
soul. Mine eyes are kindled with a supernatural vision. 
What dazzling distances! What a marvelous mirage 
unknown to earth ! O Russia ! ' ' 

The pedestrian tour ended otherwise than he had 
planned. They went by diligence to Thun and from 
there Tolstoi proceeded to Lucerne. In that " delicious 
little town" he spent several weeks longer. It was his 
first intention to descend the Rhine and cross from Hol- 
land to England, thence back to Paris and after waiting 
till August to visit Rome and Naples; and if he found 
himself not too seriously affected by the sea-trip to return 
to Russia by the Mediterranean, Constantinople, the 
Black Sea, and Odessa. 



FIRST JOURNEY ABROAD 121 

At Lucerne he found himself too much alone; and he 
confided in his aunt that the solitude was too often pain- 
ful to him, for he found that the chance acquaintances 
made in hotels and trains were not a relief. His isolation 
prompted him to work, but as usual in summer he was not 
well satisfied with what he was doing. 

At Lucerne he seems to have been moved to indignation 
because "on the nineteenth of July, 1857, an itineran. 
minstrel for half an hour sang songs and played the guitat 
in front of the Schweitzerhof, where the richest peoplr 
lodged. About a hundred persons listened to him. The 
singer thrice asked them all to give him somethinge 
Not one person gave him anything and many made 
sport of him. " 

Prince Nekhlyudof, who stands for Tolstoi, tells in his 
"Recollections" how this rebuff of the beggar minstrel 
moved him to go after the little man and bring him back to 
the hotel, where he treated him to a bottle of champagne, 
much to the amusement of the insolent waiters and the 
wrath of some of the other guests. "Lucerne" w r as pub- 
lished in the Sovremennik in the following September. 
It contains some of Tolstoi's finest descriptive passages. 
He makes you see the lake, iridescent as melted sulphur, 
the vanishing trails of the flying boats, the piled-up moun- 
tains with their glaciers and their shifting cloud-veils, 
the wooded heights crowned with castles and ruins, the 
rolling pale lilac-colored vistas and the far horizon-line 
of snow-capped peaks, all bathed in the transparent azure 
of the afternoon sky and kindled by the effulgent rays of 
the setting sun, and in contrast with this calm, soft, unified, 
inevitable beauty of Nature the stupidity of the works of 
men raeant only to attract wandering tourists. 

The story ends with characteristic moralizing, in which 
Tolstoi, after trying vainly to differentiate between good 
and evil, civilization and barbarism, and declaring that 
we have only one infallible guide, the universal Spirit 
which penetrates us collectively and endows us with the 



i22 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

craving for the right, decides that after all he has no 
reason to commiserate the little minstrel for his poverty 
or blame the aristocrat for his well-being; that it was a 
false pride in him to blame the apparent contradictions 
which cannot exist for that Infinite Being who looks down 
from bright immeasurable heights, and that his petty- 
ridiculous anger against the waiters had disturbed the 
harmonious craving for the Eternal and the Infinite. 

Tolstoi dallied so long in and about Lucerne that he 
gave up his extended tour; he went to S chaff hausen, 
Baden, Stuttgart, Frankfort, and Berlin, and took ship 
from Stettin to Petersburg, where he arrived on the 
eleventh of August. After arranging for the publication 
of " Lucerne," he went directly to his estate, where he 
proceeded to carry out the program which he had planned 
during his travels. First of all came literary work, then 
family duties, then care of the estate. His idea was to 
spend on himself about two thousand rubles and use the 
rest for his serfs. His rather complacent statement in 
his diary that it w r as sufficient for a man to live for him- 
self and do one good deed a day follows curiously after 
remarking that his great stumbling-block was the vanity 
of liberalism. 

For reading he devoted himself to the "Iliad" and the 
Gospels and regretted that there was no connection 
between those two wonderful books. "How could Homer 
have failed to know that the only good is love?" The 
answer was obvious — "He knew no revelation — there 
is no better explanation. " 

After the summer was over he went to Moscow with 
Count Nikolai and their sister Marya. During a brief 
visit at Petersburg he discovered that in spite of the 
remarkable works that he had already published he was 
quite forgotten. He confessed to his diary that this at 
first mortified him: "My reputation has gone down and 
scarcely stirs and I have felt much hurt, but now I am at 
peace. I know I have something to say and the power 



FIRST JOURNEY ABROAD 123 

to say it strongly; as for the rest the public may say what 
it will. But I must work conscientiously, exerting all my 
powers; then . . . let them spit on the altar !" 

The three Tolstois took furnished rooms in Moscow 
and engaged in the pleasures which the old Russian 
capital offered. Music at this time was one of his pas- 
sions. The family seem to have been all talented in this 
direction. The Countess Marya was a fine pianist, and 
they often had charming concerts at their rooms and often 
they all went to Fyet's house. But Fyet notes in his 
" Recollections" that Tolstoi was at that time much 
occupied with general society and frequently sallied out 
of an evening in full dress, to attend some ball or other 
function. He says : — 

"I. P. Borisof had known Tolstoi in the Caucasus, and 
as he was himself far superior to the average man, he 
could not from the first resist that giant's influence. At 
that time Tolstoi's love of gayety was very striking, and 
when he saw him going out for a w^alk in his new coat, 
with its gray beaver collar, his dark curly hair worn long 
under his fashionable hat, set jauntily on one side, and 
his smart cane, Borisof cited this expression from a 
popular song, ' He leans on his stick and boasts that it is 
of hazel-wood.'" 

Tolstoi' was also consumed with the desire to make 
himself the strongest man in the world. In spite of his 
occasional attacks of rheumatism or indigestion, he was 
a good deal of an athlete. Even when he was at Sevas- 
topol he could lie on his back and with his hands lift a 
man weighing one hundred and eighty pounds. At tug 
of war, played with a stick, he was invincible. At the 
Moscow gymnasium in the Great Dmitrovka he was 
indefatigable in violent exercises;* he was the cynosure 

*A Russian writer who sometimes visited at Yasnaya is quoted as 
saying with some humorous exaggeration: — 

"Everything in Tolstoi's character attains titanic proportions. As a 
hunter he remained for an hour and a half under the claws of a she bear 
which was tearing his flesh. As a drinker he absorbed fantastic quanti- 



i2 4 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

of all eyes as, dressed in his tights, he would practice 
jumping over the horse's back without touching the 
wool-stuffed leather cone. In summer he was an expert 
swimmer; in winter a graceful skater. The episode of 
the skating in "Anna Karenina" will occur to the reader. 

At Fyet's house he met many of the best writers of the 
day. The satirist Mikhail Yevgrafovitch Saltuikof, 
better known as N. Shtchedrin, who on account of 
political utterances, attributed falsely, as it happened, to 
him, had been practically exiled in the reign of Nicholas 
to the distant province of Viatka but, after the accession 
of Alexander, was permitted to return and was as usual 
overflowing with witty sallies. 

V. N. Tchitcherin, whose writings on the ancient 
Russian builinas, on science and religion and on political 
economy, brought him fame, was also an habitue of 
Fyet's house. Here he met Mikhail Katkdf, the editor 
of the Moscow Vyedomosti and the monthly Russky 
Vyestnik and leader of the centralizing national move- 
ment, and was induced to write for him. One of his 
most intimate acquaintances was S. T. Aksakof, the 
author of stories which helped to bring about the anti- 
serfdom movement, and father of two still more famous 
sons — both poets and leaders in Panslavism. He was a 
great sportsman, and that in itself was at the time a 
sufficient key to Tolstoi's friendship. 

In association with the French music-teacher, his 
former rival, Mortier, V. P. Botkin, and other amateurs 

ties of liquor. As a gambler he terrified his partners by the boldness of 
his play. As a soldier he advanced gayly to Bastion Four, the bastion of 
death, at Sevastopol, and there he made dying men laugh at his witty 
sayings. As a country gentleman or rural cultivator he covered the 
neighborhood of Yasnaya Polyana with gardens. He surpassed everyone 
by his prodigious activity in sport, as well as in literature. Gifted with 
a phenomenal memory, with a lively wit and a bitter tongue, he was 
always ready to enter into a discussion, no matter what might be the 
subject. And with it all he was always a bon enfant, loving to take part 
in simple games, and a bit of a boaster, too, like children who are unable 
to resist the temptation to show off before a newcomer." 



FIRST JOURNEY ABROAD 125 

he founded the Moscow Musical Society, out of which 
grew the famous Conservatory, where, under the direction 
of the Rubinsteins and others, so much has been done to 
foster the growth of national music. 



IV 

EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1858 

In January, 1858, the Countess Aleksandra A. Tolstaya, 
whom Tolstoi' had met in Switzerland, made a visit to 
Moscow. Tolstoi accompanied her by train as far as Klin, 
where he made a visit to his mother's cousin, a Princess 
Volkonskaya, who received him most affectionately and 
told him many details of her youth. These he afterward 
found useful in writing " War and Peace." While staying 
on her estate and living quietly, he wrote "Three 
Deaths," which appeared a year later in the Biblioteka 
dlya Tchetenya, or "Readers' Library," which had 
been founded by seceders from the Sovremennik. 

He spent the whole summer at Yasnaya. From there 
he wrote his Aunt Aleksandra, whom he called " Grand'- 
mere," an enthusiastic letter expressing his exhilaration 
at the coming of spring. For good people it was good to 
be alive, he said, and even for such men as himself it was 
also good at times. Nature, the very atmosphere, every- 
thing seemed to breathe of hope, and happiness was the 
result. He felt he must tell her all about himself, although 
he realized only too well what a frozen little old potato, 
boiled with sauce, he was; but spring seemed to fill him 
with visions and made him feel that he was a plant just 
bursting into blossom, ready to grow peacefully, simply, 
and joyfully in God's world. At such times there oper- 
ated within him a clarification and cleansing such as only 
those who had experienced it could understand. All the 
old was cast out — all worldly conventionalities, all lazi- 
ness, all egotism, all vices, all the mixed indefinite attach- 

126 



EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1858 127 

ments, all regrets, even repentances — away with them! 
Make room for the wonderful little flowers, the buds of 
which were swelling and bourgeoning with the spring! 

He ended this long epistle with an appeal to the dear 
old lady not to be angry with him but to send him in reply 
a word of wisdom full of human kindness. 

Fyet and his charming wife on their first visit to Tolstoi 
at Yasnaya were introduced to his Aunt Tatyana, who 
received them w r ith old-fashioned hospitality and chatted 
with them in her homely affectionate manner, calling her 
nephews by their pet names and telling the simple gossip 
of the neighborhood. The world had passed by her and the 
modern inventions were too much for her. Fyet says that 
as she was driving to Tula one day with Tolstoi she 
suddenly asked him how people sent their letters by 
telegraph. Tolstoi explained as simply as he could the 
manner of its working, and she professed to understand; 
but after a while she exclaimed: "Mon cher Leon, how 
can this be ? For all of half an hour I have not seen a 
a single letter go along the telegraph. " 

Tolstoi in his " Recollections" depicts the character of 
this kind, self-sacrificing, simple-hearted old aunt. One 
can see her sitting calmly in her arm-chair, occasionally 
indulging in some observation. A few touches fill in the 
picture: Between the windows under the mirror was 
her small writing-desk, with little china jars and a vase 
containing the sweets, the cakes and dates to which she 
treated him. By the window tw T o chairs, and to the right 
of the door a comfortable embroidered arm-chair, in which 
she liked him to sit. To this intercourse with Aunt Ta- 
tyana he attributed his best thoughts and impulses. He 
tells how when he had yielded to temptations at Tula, 
after playing cards or visiting the gypsy singers, or wasting 
too much time hunting, he would return to his aunt and 
kiss her dear energetic hand, while she would in turn kiss 
his soiled and vicious hand. Though she knew perfectly 
well what he had been doing and regretted it, she never 



128 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

reproached him but always treated him with unfailing 
love and sympathy. 

What struck him most pleasantly in her character was 
her boundless kindness to every one, even to animals; he 
never knew her to become angry or say a harsh word or 
condemn any one. She included in her benevolence even 
the jealous Aunt Yiishkova, who had so cruelly hurt her 
feelings; she would not express blame for the Countess 
Marya's husband, who had behaved shamefully; nor 
would she find fault with Sergyei Tolstoi, who had formed 
an irregular connection with a gypsy girl. Her lesson 
of life was taught not so much by deeds as by her "peace- 
ful, humble, submissive life of affection, a perfectly un- 
obtrusive love." Love and tranquillity were her chief 
attractions. He says she never spoke of herself or of 
religion, and though she refrained from telling how she 
believed or prayed she let it be known that she rejected 
the dogma of eternal torment; in her mind God was too 
good to wish any one to suffer. Tolstoi could never for- 
give himself that at a time when money was particularly 
scarce he refused to let her buy sweetmeats or give trifles 
to the beggars who came to her. " Dear dead aunt, for- 
forgive me!" he cried. 

If there was any one thing that Karamzin, Pushkin, 
Gogol, Grigorovitch, Pisemsky, and Turgenief accom- 
plished in literature, it was to lift the muzhiks, the 
peasants, into the focus of observation, so that the world 
might appreciate the picturesqueness, the originality, the 
fine character of those children of Nature. They made 
them so much more interesting than the sophisticated 
creatures of high life that are alike in all countries! 
This discovery constituted the Russian school of fiction. 
Tolstoi early interested himself in the peasantry, and no 
one succeeded better than he in catching their naive and 
fascinating peculiarities. 

Fyet in his " Recollections " tells how humorously Count 
Nikolai described his brother's efforts to get better ac- 



EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1858 129 

quainted with the life of the peasant and his method of 
farming. He said he wanted to get hold of everything 
at once, without omitting anything, even his gymnastics, 
and so had rigged up a bar under his library window and 
tried to show that gymnastics did not interfere with 
agriculture. But his prikashchik had different ideas 
and complained that when they came to the barin for 
orders they would find him swinging on one knee on a 
perch, hanging head down, dressed in a red jacket, his 
hair falling disheveled and the blood rushing into his 
face; it was very demoralizing. He declared that his 
brother was delighted with the way the muzhik Ufan 
stuck out his arms when plowing and so Ufan had become 
for him the symbol of rural strength, like the fabulous 
Mikula Selyaninovitch, and so he too stuck out his elbows 
as he clung to the plow and Uf anized ! 

Somewhat the same kind of Gogolesque wit Tolstoi him- 
self displays in a letter written in May to Fyet, whom he ad- 
dresses as "Dyadenka golubchik" (or darling little uncle), 
where after various greetings he waxes enthusiastic over 
the spring, telling how immensely he had enjoyed it in 
his solitude. "My brother Nikolai must be at Nikol- 
skoye. Catch him," he said, "and do not let him go. . . . 
I mean to come and see you this month. Turgenief has 
gone to Winzig till August to cure his bladder. The 
devil take him. I am tired of loving him. He deserts 
us and will not cure his bladder. Now good-by, 
dear friend. If by the time I arrive you have no poem 
ready for me, I shall proceed to squeeze one out of 
you." 

He seems to have been in a very gay frame of mind, for 
in another letter he tries to wake him from his long 
silence with a hail and a halloo: "In the first place, you 
show no sign of life though it is spring and you know 
that we are all thinking of you and that I am thirsty for 
a sight of you, though, like Prometheus, I am chained to 



i 3 o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

a rock. You should either come or send a suitable 
invitation. 

" Secondly, you have kept a brother of mine and a very 
good brother, nicknamed 'Firdausi.' The chief culprit 
in this matter is, I suspect, your wife, to whom I humbly 
bow, begging her to return to us our own brother. " 

He was expecting a visit from Druzhinin and he wanted 
Fyet also. He called him affectionate diminutive pet- 
names: "Dushenka, dyadenka, Fyetinka. " 

It has been mentioned that Tolstoi took little interest 
in public affairs ; certainly the stories already written and 
published by him afford no intimation that one of the 
greatest revolutions of the nineteenth century was under 
way. This aloofness may be regarded as at least partially 
responsible for the fact that his work seems to have at- 
tracted little attention, that public criticism left it entirely 
unnoticed. 

Yet the new Emperor had already announced that 
the abolition of serfdom must begin from above unless it 
was to be accomplished from below. The nobility 
somewhat later was authorized to form committees; and 
secret orders from the Emperor were sent to all the gov- 
ernors and marshals of nobility with suggestions for 
practical cooperation with this end in view. 

A meeting of the nobility of the government of Tula 
took place in September, 1858, and passed a resolution 
approving of the emancipation of the peasants but insist- 
ing that a certain amount of land should be allotted to 
them in hereditary ownership and that the proprietors 
should receive for the land they were to give up a full and 
fair pecuniary recompense by means of such financial 
measures as would not entail obligatory relations between 
proprietors and muzhiks — such relations the nobility 
regarding it as necessary to end. 

Tolstoi was present at this meeting and his signature, 
together with more than a hundred others, was attached 



EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1858 131 

to the resolution, which was put into the hands of the 
Marshal of the Nobility at Tula. 

Not a word of this appears in Tolstoi's published cor- 
respondence; it would have been quite characteristic of 
him to oppose the measure, at least in any compromising 
form. Years later, in 1904, he explained his attitude 
toward the excited state of society as being involuntarily 
opposed to any pressure from without, and that if he was 
excited and happy himself at that time it came from his 
personal and inner motives and those impelled him to 
help the peasants in his own way. 

The first seed of his later prejudice against story- 
writing in its conventional form may be seen in a letter 
written in November from Moscow to Fyet, in which he 
petulantly declares that writing stories is stupid and 
shameful. Thank heaven, he says, "I have not as yet 
permitted myself to write, and will not." Then he adds, 
also, whimsically: "Druzhinin is asking me as a matter of 
friendship to write him a story. I really want to," he 
says; "I shall spin such a yarn that there will be neither 
head nor tail to it — the Shah of Persia smoking a pipe and 
I — love you." 

Then, after asking how Fyet is getting along with his 
translation of the odes of Hafiz, he says seriously, " The 
height of wisdom and fortitude for me is to enjoy the 
lucubrations of other men and not to let my own go forth 
into the world in ugly garb, but rather to consume it 
myself with my daily bread. 

"Then at times one suddenly feels the ambition to be 
a great man and how annoying it is that it has not as yet 
been brought about. One even makes haste to rise 
earlier, to finish dinner, in order to begin." 

And he ends with an imperative order to Fyet to send 
him one of the best of Hafiz's poems and he in return will 
send him a sample of wheat. Sport has bored him to 
death and though the weather is excellent, he will not go 
hunting alone. 



1 32 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

A month later Tolstoi was invited by S. S. Gromeka, 
the publicist, to come with Count Nikolai, Fyet, and 
other friends to hunt a she-bear which, with two young 
ones, haunted the forest at Volotchok, between Peters- 
burg and Moscow. He had an exciting experience 
which he made light of in a letter to his aunt, dated 
January 6, 1859. He said: — 

"I am afraid that the report of an adventure I had 
may in some way reach you in an exaggerated form, and 
so I hasten to tell you about it myself. 

"I have been bear-hunting with Nikolai'. On the 
second I shot a bear; on the third, when we went out 
again, an extraordinary thing happened to me. The 
bear, without seeing me, came directly for me. I shot 
at her from a distance of six meters, missed her the first 
time; the second mortally wounded her, but she made a 
dash for me, knocked me over and, while my companions 
were running up she bit me twice, in the forehead over 
the eye, and under the eye. Fortunately I was in her 
clutches only ten or fifteen seconds. The bear made her 
escape and I got up with a slight injury which neither 
disfigures me nor pains me; neither my skull nor my eye 
is injured, so that I escaped with only a slight scar left 
on my forehead. I am now in Moscow and feeling 
perfectly well. I am writing you the whole story without 
concealing anything, so that you may not be anxious. 
It is all over and it only remains to thank God who saved 
me in such an extraordinary way." 

He did not tell the whole story. Fyet relates the inci- 
dent: Ostashkof was a Nimrod among huntsmen, and 
on his appearance Fyet says the wild uproar and excite- 
ment of the scene could be compared only to the plunging 
of a red-hot iron into cold water. Tolstoi borrowed a 
double-barreled shot-gun. The huntsmen were directed 
to tramp down the deep snow in as wide a circle as 
possible, so as to afford freedom of movement. Tolstoi 
as usual refused to take advice, on the ground that they 



EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1858 133 

were going to shoot the bear and not to wrestle with her. 
When the bear, dislodged from her lair by Ostashkof, 
dashed down the forest glade, Tolstoi was in her way; 
and as he was buried in snow up to his waist, he could 
not evade her onslaught. He fell with his face in the 
snow. The bear, dashing over him, turned around and 
tried to bite him. In spite of his thick fur cap the bear 
managed to lacerate his face pretty severely, but Ostash- 
kof drove her off with a switch and she was not killed until 
the next day. Tolstoi's first words were, as he got up 
streaming with blood and with the skin hanging down 
his face: "What will Fyet say? But I am proud 
of it!" 

The wound was washed with snow and bandaged with 
handkerchiefs, and when it was sewed up at the nearest 
town it proved not to be very serious. The scar re- 
mained to remind him of his narrow escape. He after- 
ward told the story in one of his reading-books. 

Long years afterward, when he was horror-stricken at 
the thought of the execution of Sophia Perovskaya, his 
feelings when in the clutches of the bear recurred to 
him. 

" I remember," he said, " how the bear attacked me and 
pressed me down, digging the claws of her enormous paw 
into my shoulder. I lay under her and looked up into 
her big warm mouth with the white, wet teeth. She was 
panting above me, and I saw her turn her head so as to 
bite into both my temples at once, and in her eagerness 
or because she was so ravenous, she snapped into the air 
just above my head and then opened her mouth again — 
that red, wet, hungry mouth, dripping with saliva. I felt 
that I was about to die and I looked into the depths of that 
mouth, as one condemned to be executed looks into the 
grave dug for him. I looked and I remember that I 
felt no dread or fear. I saw with one eye beyond the 
outline of that mouth a patch of blue sky gleaming be- 
tween violet clouds piled clumsily on one another, and I 



i 3 4 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

thought how beautiful it was up there. . . . Whenever 
I think of death, I picture that situation to myself because 
I have never been nearer death than I was then. I recall 
it, reflect on it, and realize that death — real, serious, and 
all-engulfing death — is, thank God, not dreadful." 

Tolstoi's principal literary work that year was the pro- 
phetic story, "Family Happiness/' in which he drew an 
imaginary picture of the changing of ideal conditions in 
a loving home. The heroine is said by Fyet to have been 
the Maryushka who accompanied the poet and his wife 
when they made their first visit at Yasnaya Polyana. The 
story is shot through with the songs of nightingales, the 
music of Beethoven and Mozart, and is the most idyllic 
of all Tolstoi's novels: the first part telling of a young 
girl's love for a man twice her age; the second depicting 
the tragic disillusionment of married life, where misunder- 
standings arise, where temptations assail a heart hunger- 
ing for delight, and where at last the fermenting passions 
settle down into the stable calm of a happiness based on 
home and children. Tolstoi' displays in this fascinating 
novelette a masterly understanding of a woman's mind. 

"Family Happiness" was published in February, while 
Tolstoi was still in Moscow. On the twelfth of February 
he joined the Moscow Society of Friends of Russian 
Literature and delivered his maiden speech, in which he 
advanced as his thesis the superiority of the purely 
artistic element in literature over all temporary tendencies. 
The address was delivered from manuscript and the 
Society voted to print it, but in some way it was mislaid 
or lost. The question raised by him was discussed and 
the President of the Society, the Slavophil dramatist and 
theologian, Aleksei Stepdnovitch Khomyakof, while 
welcoming him as a worker in the field of pure art and 
praising his views, nevertheless urged that the domain of 
letters also embraced temporary and accidental phases 
of activity. 

"The ever right and the ever beautiful," he said, "the 



EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1858 135 

ever changeless, like the fundamental laws of the soul, 
must hold the first place in the thoughts and impulses 
and therefore in the words of man. That and that only 
is handed down from generation to generation, and from 
one people to another, as a precious inheritance. " 

But Khomyakof urged that criticism also had its place, 
satire had its function in disclosing human defects and in 
healing social evils. Art must be perfectly free but the 
artist, as a man of his own time and its representative, 
must enter into all the painful as well as the joyous 
emotions of the world about him; and even while he 
devotes himself to the true and the beautiful he cannot 
help reflecting his own time in its mixture of heart- 
delighting truth and perturbing falsehood. 

He took the count himself as an example of the tren- 
chant social critic, calling particular attention to the story 
of the " Three Deaths," where the consumptive postillion, 
dying on the stove amid a crowd of indifferent comrades, 
certainly seemed to reveal some moral defect. 

Khomyakdf prophesied that Tolstoi's talent would 
not soon be exhausted and that the temporary and 
transient off-currents, absorbed into the eternal and the 
artistic, would be ennobled and thus all taken together 
would form one harmonious current. 

It is unfortunate that Tolstoi's address is not extant, 
because it would make a curious commentary on his 
later theories of art. It is certainly true that more and 
more as time went on Tolstoi devoted his talents to 
trenchant social criticism, until finally he practically 
renounced the field of pure art. But he was not enrolled 
among the number who were enthusiastic supporters of 
emancipation. All he cared for was the emancipation of 
the spirit; and patriotism, especially in its intensely nar- 
row and concentrated form of Panslavism, did not ap- 
peal to him at all. 



V 

PHASES OF INNER DEVELOPMENT 

In April (1859) Tolstoi returned to the country, after 
making his Aunt Aleksandra, in Petersburg, a visit the 
memory of which he always treasured. Fyet also came 
to his estate and there, in July, received a long letter from 
Turgenief in verse. It is not generally known that 
Turgenief made his first appearance in literature as a 
poet. His long, rambling, sentimental poem, "Parasha, " 
written under the influence of Lord Byron, had appeared 
twenty years earlier and he often expressed himself in 
lyrical stanzas. In this poetic epistle he asked Fyet to 
kiss Nikolai Tolstoi and to make his compliments to 
Lyof, adding, "I know he bears me little love and 
little love I bear him," the elements whereof they were 
formed being too differently mixed; but many paths 
lead across the world and there was no need for them to 
interfere with each other. 

Nevertheless Tolstoi visited Turgenief during the sum- 
mer; they had a quiet talk and parted on friendly terms. 
Turgenief told Fyet that there could be no misunder- 
standing between them because they knew each other 
too well and realized that it was impossible for them to 
become intimate: "We are modeled of different clay." 

In February, while he was still at Yasnaya, he received 
a letter from Fyet asking his advice about buying an 
estate in that neighborhood. In his reply, after telling 
him of an estate of four hundred desyatins or a little 
more than a thousand acres, and "unfortunately seventy 
souls of bad serfs," which would yield him more than 
two thousand six hundred rubles a year and cost him 

136 



PHASES OF INNER DEVELOPMENT 137 

about twenty thousand, he proceeded to talk about cur- 
rent literature. 

He had been reading Turgenief's " On the Eve," which 
he considered better than a "A Nest of Noblemen." 
He found in it some excellent negative characters, espe- 
cially the artist and the father, but the rest did not strike 
him as types either in their conception or in their position, 
but were, if anything, quite insignificant. He was sur- 
prised as usual that Turgenief with his fine powers and 
poetic sensibilities should not be able to refrain from 
banality even in his methods, which were negative after 
the manner of Gogol. "There is no humanity, no 
sympathy with his characters, but he presents monsters 
w T hom he scolds and does not pity. This jars painfully 
with the tone and liberal intention in everything else. It 
was all very well in the days of Tsar Gorokh or of Gogol — 
though if one does not pity even the most insignificant of 
one's characters, one should scold them so that the 
heavens grow hot or laugh at them till one's sides ache, 
but not treat them as our splenetic and dyspeptic Turge- 
nief does." 

Yet he acknowledged that no one else could have 
written such a novel. Then he went on to speak of 
Aleksandr Nikolayevitch Ostrovsky's great drama, "The 
Thunder Storm," which he considered a wTetched work, 
though he blamed neither Ostrovsky nor Turgenief but 
the times. He was convinced that it was the duty of all 
of them, not to learn, but to teach the humbler ones a 
little of what they knew. 

In this was a hint of what he was doing during that 
winter of 1859-60. He was spending what time he could 
spare from the care of his estate to the school which 
during the next few years was to give him so much 
pleasure and, owing to the interference of the authorities, 
so much vexation of spirit. On the thirteenth of Feb- 
ruary he notes in his diary that he had finished reading 
a work on the degeneracy of the human mind which 



138 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

brought up the question whether there was a higher 
degree of intellectual development. And that led him 
to think of prayer. " To what can one pray?" he asked 
himself. " What kind of a God can be imagined so dis- 
tinctly that we can ask Him to communicate with us?" 
To him at least a God so easily imagined lost all majesty, 
a God whom one could pray to and serve seemed to be 
the expression of human weakness; God was God only 
because he could not comprehend Him completely, and 
moreover God was not a being, but was a law, a force. 
He wanted this conclusion to stand as a memorial to 
his conviction of the power of the mind. 

He also read Auerbach's tales and was greatly im- 
pressed by them, and by Goethe's version of the old story 
of Reynard the Fox. 

He was growing more and more dissatisfied with what 
he called his " strange religion" — the religion of progress. 
He described it as " merely the absence of faith and the 
striving after methods of activity, represented as faith. " 
"Man requires an impulse" — what is expressed by the 
German word Schwung. 

Naturally the phases of Tolstoi's inner development 
were regarded with amazement and amusement by his 
friends : they did not understand him. They looked on 
his individuality as foolishness and eccentricity and yet 
they could not help seeing that the ultimate outcome was 
to be something out of the common. Botkin wrote Fyet 
on the eighteenth of March, i860, that any part of his 
foolishness was of more value than the wisest acts of 
others, and shortly afterward Turgenief wrote him to the 
same effect: it was evidently decreed by Fate that he 
should do queer things. " When will he turn his last 
somersault and stand on his feet ?" 

Tolstoi was working in a desultory way on his novel 
"The Cossacks," which he had begun eight years before. 
But his general feeling was that "it is undesirable to 
write novels, especially for men who are depressed and 




Count L. N. Tolstoi, i860. 



PHASES OF INNER DEVELOPMENT 139 

are in doubt as to what they want of life. " He expressed 
his opinion to Druzhinin, who w T rote him a long lecture on 
his tendencies. He told him that every writer has his 
moments of doubt and depression but still there was no 
permanent cessation in literary activity. Not only would 
renunciation of authorship at the age of thirty mean losing 
half the interest of life, but it would be an evasion of a 
great responsibility owed to Russian society. In Russia 
even the short story, " the most frivolous and insignificant 
form of literature," carries with it a purpose and arouses 
discussion and thought; it is not as in other countries a 
matter of idle gossip and dilettante insignificance, but it 
carries the voice of a leader resounding through the whole 
Empire. The weakest of Turgenief's tales therefore 
were divided as by a whole ocean from the very best of 
Eugenie Tours' — "with her half-talent." The Russian 
public, he said, had chosen Tolstoi together with four or 
five others as their leaders and therefore it was his 
bounden duty not to hide his talent in a napkin but to 
work even to exhaustion. 

Then it was no small thing to turn his back on an 
honest, independent and influential literary circle which 
for ten years had been upholding the banner of Liberal- 
ism and borne an immense amount of abuse without 
committing a single base action, until at last its members 
had compelled respect and w r on honor and moral influence. 
If there were foolish and stupid men in it, even they 
were adding to the total of good work done. Why then 
should Tolstoi renounce a place superior to Ostrovsky's, 
with his immense talent and a moral tendency as worthy 
as his own ? 

Fyet, who seems to have imitated Tolstoi and given 
out the impression that he was not going to write any 
more either, came in for a share of this literary curtain- 
lecture. Druzhinin wrote him that it was all right to 
refrain from writing as long as one had nothing of con- 
sequence to say, but as soon as the inspiration should come 



i4o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

it would be impossible to keep good poetry and a good 
book unpublished even though one swore a thousand 
oaths to do so. 

" What is not right in Tolstoi's resolution and in yours/' 
said he, "is this — they originate under the influence of 
a grudge against literature and the public. But if an 
author is to be offended at every sign of indifference and 
at every bit of harsh criticism no one will be left to write 
except Turgenief, who manages somehow to be every 
one's friend. " 

Druzhinin himself had been abused and insulted 
violently but he had no intention of giving up; if the horse 
on which he rode plunged and tried to run away it only 
made a bad matter worse to get angry; sit firm in the 
saddle and go ahead. 

If Tolstoi was depressed and unable to write connect- 
edly, there was good reason for it. His favorite brother, 
Count Nikolai, called Firdausi because of his "original 
Oriental wisdom/' was in precarious health. He had 
arrived at Yasnaya in the month of May and was cough- 
ing badly. • He was greatly emaciated and his brothers 
were trying to persuade him to go abroad for treatment. 
Turgenief wrote to Fyet from the spa at Soden about the 
middle of June, expressing his concern at the "dear, 
good fellow's" illness: "Why not make him come here ?" 
he said. "Throw yourself at his feet and implore him; 
then drive him by force." The air at Soden was wonder- 
fully soft and mild and the waters were regarded as a 
specific for lung-troubles. 

Count Nikolai took their advice. He paused at 
Petersburg long enough to consult a physician and was 
recommended to go abroad. At Soden he found Turge- 
nief, who was boasting of being perfectly well. They tried 
to play chess together but Turgenief was too much pre- 
occupied with a German girl about whom he was raving, 
and Nikolai was evidently feeling too wretched to enjoy 
it. Still a week's "cure" had made him feel better and 
he liked the unpretentiousness of the place. 



VI 

SECOND JOURNEY ABROAD 

Tolstoi, in the meantime, was restless and unhappy. 
He complained that his farming on a large scale was 
crushing him. The fact that he had no wife and was get- 
ting along in life tormented him; everything was out of 
tune. 

His sister and her children were about going abroad 
and he suddenly made up his mind to accompany them. 
He had been for some time intending to study the educa- 
tional methods of Western Europe. He procured his 
passport and they sailed together from Petersburg for 
Stettin on the fifteenth of July. At Berlin he suffered 
for four days from an excruciating toothache and from 
other physical ailments. As soon as his toothache w r as 
relieved, he spent a few days in Berlin visiting various 
educational establishments. At the University he 
attended lectures given by Johann Gustav Droysen, the 
professor of history, and by Emil du Bois-Reymond, 
professor of Physics, the great authority on animal 
electricity. He also visited the evening classes in 
manual training for artisans, at the Workmen's Union, 
and was pleased with a scheme that one popular pro- 
fessor had devised. It was a question-box into which 
the students slipped written questions, to be answered in 
due course. It seemed to him admirably designed to 
enliven the instruction and to bring about great freedom 
of intercourse between students and teachers. 

He visited the Moabit prison, where solitary confinement 
was among the punishments. This kind of torture he 
condemned no less strongly than the guillotine. He left 

141 



142 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Berlin near the end of July and spent a day in Leipzig 
examining the schools, which had the reputation of being 
the best in Europe; but neither there nor at Dresden was 
he pleased with the spirit of the instruction. One school 
that he visited he called terrible. The children were 
frightened and paralyzed, discipline was carried out by 
blows, lessons were learned in parrot fashion and hypoc- 
risy was inculcated. 

He was fascinated by the scenery of the Saxon Switzer- 
land, and at Dresden he had an interesting visit with 
Berthold Auerbach, to whom he jestingly introduced 
himself as Eugen Baumann, the principal character of 
one of his novels, but he looked so portentous that the 
novelist was afraid that he was in for a libel-suit. Tolstoi, 
however, quickly relieved his apprehensions by adding, 
"not in name but in character." He regarded Auerbach 
as his inspiration for the founding of schools for his 
peasantry, and he took pleasure in telling him so. In 
Auerbach's first long novel, "Ein neues Leben" ("A 
New Life"), Count Fulkenberg, who had been an army 
officer, is imprisoned and manages to escape. He buys 
a schoolmaster's passport and under the assumed name 
of Eugen Baumann takes up the task of educating 
peasant children. Auerbach's village tales contrast the 
simplicity of peasant life with the complexity of life in 
cities. Although most that he wrote is, with the excep- 
tion of "On the Heights," forgotten at the present time, 
the " Village Stories of the Black Forest " exerted a power- 
ful influence in awakening an interest in the German 
peasant. It can be seen that Tolstoi would have found 
in him a kindred spirit, and Auerbach long cherished 
the memory of his intercourse with the great Russian 
writer. 

Tolstoi left Dresden on the last day of July and went 
to Kissingen for the "cure." He did not go to see 
Nikolai but Nikolai went to see him, in spite of what he 
said in a lively letter to Fyet. He wrote: — 



SECOND JOURNEY ABROAD 143 

"My sister and her children arrived at Soden, where 
she will stay and take her cure. Uncle Lydvotchka 
remains at Kissingen, five hours' distance from Soden, so 
that I shall not see him. I have sent your letter to 
Lydvotchka by my brother Sergyei, who will call at 
Kissingen on his way to Russia. He will call on you 
soon and tell you all the news. Forgive me, my dear 
Afanasy Afanasyevitch, for having read your letter to my 
brother. You tell the truth in it, when you generalize; 
but when you speak of yourself, you are mistaken. You 
always make the same mistake of being unbusinesslike; 
you do not know yourself and you know nothing of what 
is going on around you. But pots are not boiled by the 
gods! Now be practical; take up business without 
hesitation and I am sure it will work the unpractical out 
of you; moreover it will probably squeeze out a few lyrics 
which Turgenief and I and a few more chaps would read 
with delight. And forget the rest of the world! Why 
I love you, my dear Afanasy Afanasyevitch, is that you 
are all truth: what proceeds from you is yourself and 
not mere words, as is the case with dear old Ivan 
Sergeyevitch. " 

Other letters reflected the hopefulness, with its under- 
current of doubt, so characteristic of consumptives. 
The weather that summer was wretched — wind and 
continual rain. Count Sergyei Tolstoi', who had lost 
money at roulette and was fleeing homeward, brought his 
brother at Kissingen the disquieting news that Nikolai 
was not really improving, but three days later, on the 
eighteenth of August, Nikolai himself appeared. He 
remarked despairingly that grapes and a good climate 
had been prescribed for him but neither was to be found 
in Europe that year. When he went back to Soden, 
Tolstoi still stayed on at Kissingen to complete his cure, 
which he wrote his Aunt Tatyana was doing him good. 
His thoughts were at home, for he requested full informa- 
tion from the steward about the farming, the harvest, and 



i 4 4 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

the horses which had been sick and from the school- 
master about the school. He wanted to know how many 
pupils attended and whether they were studying well. 
He told her he should certainly return in the autumn and 
intended to devote himself more zealously than ever to 
its interests, and he was anxious for its reputation to be 
kept up while he was away so that as many pupils as 
possible would be attracted from different parts. 

He devoted his spare time to reading. He read Lord 
Bacon in English. He was particularly interested in 
Martin Luther, whose honesty and fearless activity and 
courage in breaking away from old traditions appealed to 
him. He made excursions to various places associ- 
ated with the Reformer, and after visiting the room in the 
castle in Wartburg where Luther in his concealment 
made his first attempt to translate the New Testament 
into German, he wrote in his diary, "Luther is great." 

At Kissingen he made the acquaintance of Julius 
Froebel, author of "The System of Social Politics," 
and nephew of Friedrich W. A. Froebel, founder of the 
Kindergarten system, then a man of fifty-five, and went 
walking with him. . . . Froebel in his Autobiography 
expresses his astonishment that Tolstoi's views did not 
seem to harmonize with his system. Tolstoi asserted 
that progress in Russia could proceed only from popular 
education; it would give better results in his country 
which was young and as yet unspoiled than in Germany, 
because the Russian people were not vitiated by a false 
system, whereas the German people had already gone 
forward on the wrong track. 

But he did not believe in making popular education 
compulsory. He declared that if it was a good thing, 
then it would be recognized as such and demanded, 
just as food is demanded by the stimulus of hunger. He 
saw in the trades unions or artels, with their motto of 
"Each for all and all for each," the hope for social or- 
ganization. In this respect the Russian mir or village 



SECOND JOURNEY ABROAD 145 

community was a basis for vast national prosperity. He 
was surprised that he had not found in any of the Ger- 
man peasant households Auerbach's " Village Stories" 
or the poems of Hebel. In Russia, the peasants would 
weep over such books, said he, not thinking probably 
that they could not read at all. 

Froebel called his attention to the novels and other 
works of Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, and Tolstoi took up 
with keen zest RiehPs " Natural History of the People as 
the Foundation of the National Policy." 

Nikolai Tolstoi was ordered to go south, and his 
brother joined him at Soden and went with him first to 
Freiburg and then to Frankfort, where their Aunt Alek- 
sandra Tolstaya was staying. She afterward related 
how one day Prince Alexander of Hesse and his wife 
were calling on her when the door suddenly opened and 
Tolstoi entered dressed in a costume which reminded her 
of a Spanish brigand. He w r as evidently not pleased 
with her visitors and quickly took his leave. After he had 
gone they asked in astonishment who that singular 
individual was, and when she told them that it was 
Tolstoi they expressed the greatest regret that she had not 
presented him to them, as they had read his admirable 
writings and were most anxious to meet him. 

From Frankfort the two brothers and the Countess 
Marya went to Hyeres on the Mediterranean. From 
there Tolstoi wTOte his aunt that there if anyw 7 here 
some chance for the invalid's recovery might be left; a 
Princess Galitsuina who had come there, he said, in a 
far worse condition, was entirely restored. But appar- 
ently he had not lived very wisely at Soden, and that, 
together with the unfortunate weather and the trying 
journey, had exhausted his powers of resistance. 

Tolstoi in his letters tells of the losing battle and the 
pathetic ending of a life from which much might have 
been expected. It came on the morning of September 
20, i860. Nikolai was conscious to the last. That 



i 4 6 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

very day he even washed and dressed himself. Only a 
quarter of an hour before he passed away he drank some 
milk and said he felt well. He was in his usual jesting 
mood; he manifested an interest in his brother's educa- 
tional plans. He did not groan or grumble; he was full 
of gratitude for the little that he allowed his family to 
do for him. He scarcely mentioned his terrible spasms 
of choking and coughing or the sleepless nights and the 
dreams that tormented him when he dozed. After it 
was all over Tolstoi went into his room and uncovered 
his face; it showed little trace of suffering but was beau- 
tiful with his best expression of happiness and peace. 

He wrote Fyet that nothing in his life had ever produced 
such an impression on him. "What should one worry 
about or strive for when nothing remains of what was 
once Nikolai' Tolstoi'? ... A few minutes before he 
died he fell into a doze and suddenly awoke and mur- 
mured with horror, 'What is that?' It was what he 
saw — the absorption of himself into nothingness. 
And if he found nothing to cling to, what can I find ? 
Still less!" 

No wonder Tolstoi agreed with Nikolai's remark that 
there is nothing worse than death, or that under the clear 
realization that death was the end of all he felt that 
there is nothing worse than life. 

After speaking of his brother's love of Nature persisting 
to the last, he said: "Only one thing remains — the 
vague hope that there is in Nature, of which we are a 
part while we are on earth, something that will remain and 
will be found. " 

He tried in vain to repeat the Biblical phrase, "Let the 
dead bury their dead," but the impression left by his 
brother's death was exceedingly painful to him; he could 
not rid himself of it: — 

" One cannot persuade a stone to fall up instead of 
down, contrary to gravitation. One cannot laugh at a 
stale joke. One cannot eat without appetite. What is 



SECOND JOURNEY ABROAD 147 

life for, when to-morrow the torment of death will begin 
with all the abomination of falsehood and self-decep- 
tion and the end will be annihilation ? A strange thing 
indeed! Men say to one another: 'Be useful, be vir- 
tuous, be happy while you live;' but you and happiness 
and virtue and usefulness consist of truth. And the truth 
I have garnered out of a life of thirty-two years is that 
the state in which we are placed is terrible. Take life 
as it is; you have put yourselves where you are! Well, 
I do take life as it is. As soon as man reaches the 
highest degree of development, he clearly sees that it is 
all humbug and deception and that the truth, which 
after all he loves better than anything else, is terrible, 
that when you get a clear full view of it you wake with a 
start of horror and exclaim as my brother did, t What is 
that?' 

"But of course as long as the desire to know and 
speak the truth remains, we try to know it and express it. 
That alone remains to me from the moral world and I 
cannot put myself higher than that. And this is the only 
thing I shall do, but not in the form of your art. Art is a 
lie, and I can no longer love a lie though it be beautiful. " 

In his diary only a few days earlier there is the same 
almost hopeless pessimism, with a hint at suicide. After a 
month he complains that the event had torn him terribly 
from life and the old question kept rising, "Why?" and 
he obscurely threatens to cut short the journey to his 
brother; but "Where?" he asks, and can only answer 
"Nowhere." To conjure up forgetfulness he tries to 
write, compelling himself, but unsuccessfully, for the sole 
reason that he could not attribute to his work suffi- 
cient importance to give him the power and the pa- 
tience to work. 

One could almost wish that he had infused even into 
this tragedy what Robert Louis Stevenson did w^hen at the 
death of his friend Ferrier he expressed his grief in 
whimsical slang — "Poor Ferrier, it bust me horrid ! " 



i 4 8 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Nikolai' Tolstoi according to Turgenief actually prac- 
ticed the simple life which his brother theorized about. 
He preferred to live in humble lodgings in the suburbs 
of Moscow, and shared his quarters and whatever he had 
with any poor creature that begged of him. His family 
"loved and respected him more than any one on earth. " 
Fyet says that he was simply worshiped by all who 
knew him. In the Caucasus he sometimes indulged too 
freely in strong drink, but after his return to Russia, even 
under the temptation of hunting parties, he had so far 
overcome his habit that it was never noticed. He had, 
as his brother said, extraordinary strength of character 
and powers of concentration. He was witty and satirical, 
a clever spinner of yarns. It seems strange that with this 
equipment he did not leave his mark on Russian litera- 
ture. Turgenief says that writing was physically almost 
impossible for him. The labor of holding a pen was 
too much for him; he was like a plowman with hands 
stiffened by work. Two days before he died he read 
to his brother the one article that he ever seems to 
have completed — "Memoirs of a Sportsman" — which 
was published in the Sovremennik. 



VII 

EDUCATIONAL STUDIES ABROAD 

TolstoI decided to spend the winter at Hyeres; in his 
depression it made no difference where he lived. At the 
pension was a Russian lady named Plaksina, with a boy 
of nine whose lungs were thought to be diseased. 

Sergyei Plaksin became a poet and wrote a book 
entitled " Count L. Tolstoi among the Children. " 

Tolstoi, though he tried to work and made some prog- 
ress with his " Cossacks" and wrote an article on 
National Education, was always ready for a frolic with 
his sister's children and the little Plaksin boy; he would 
take them on long excursions to the salt-boiling establish- 
ments on the peninsula of Porquerolle or to the ruins of 
the castle called Trou des Fees or to the sacred mountain 
where was a small chapel with a wonder-working image 
of the Virgin, and he would tell them exciting stories about 
the golden horse and the gigantic tree from which all the 
world could be seen. When Sergyei showed signs of 
lagging the stalwart count would take him on his shoulder 
and still keep on with his tales. 

At dinner he would relate all sorts of amusing nonsense 
about Russia for the delectation of the landlady, who 
would not know whether to believe him or not. After 
dinner they all assembled on the wide terrace or, if it 
rained, in the drawing-room and improvised operas and 
ballets with ear-torturing music; or else Tolstoi would 
give them " stunts" in gymnastics, for which purpose he 
rigged up in the doorway an apparatus on which he 
would turn somersaults. 

Occasionally they all became too turbulent and the 

149 



i 5 o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

mothers appealed to him to keep them quiet; he would 
collect them around the table and make them write little 
essays on some theme, as for instance, What is the dif- 
erence between Russia and other countries ? and he sternly 
forbade one to copy from another nor would he let them use 
lines. While they were writing the count would walk up 
and down and drive the nervous ladies frantic. "You 
are going back and forth like a pendulum," his sister 
would say; "I wish you would sit down." 

As a reward he would bring the children water-colors 
from Marseilles and teach them to paint. Thus he in- 
structed them and joined in their games and acted as 
umpire in their disputes. 

Occasionally he went out into society. At one even- 
ing party at the house of the Princess Dundukova-Kor- 
sakova, he was expected as the great lion; but he arrived 
very late, dressed in street costume with wooden sabots. 
He had been on a long walk and came just as he was. 
He caused great amusement by assuring the company 
that wooden shoes were the best and most comfortable 
covering for the feet. The soiree had up to that moment 
been distressingly dull, but as he was in excellent spirits 
the party grew very lively. Tolstoi sat down at the piano 
and there was an hour of jolly singing. 

Tolstoi' visited the schools at Marseilles, where the pro- 
portion of pupils to the population was very large and 
where they had three, four or even six years of instruc- 
tion. But he entirely disapproved of the school- 
program, which consisted of learning by heart the cate- 
chism, Biblical and secular history, arithmetic, spelling 
and book-keeping. He thought that the students who 
had finished the course had no practical knowledge of 
the simplest operations of mathematics, and their book- 
keeping learned by rote might just as well have been 
taught in four or five hours. If asked any question in 
history out of routine, they were likely to reply, for 
example, that Henry IV. was killed by Julius Caesar. 



EDUCATIONAL STUDIES ABROAD 151 

At one institution children of four years old were drilled 
to make evolutions like soldiers at the sound of a whistle 
and at the word of command sang praises to God and 
their benefactors. On the whole he was convinced that 
the schools of Marseilles were exceedingly bad. 

Yet the common people w T ith whom he talked seemed 
intelligent and clever, free from prejudices and quite 
civilized. The average city workman could write letters 
without serious errors, had a fair idea of politics and 
modern history and geography and some knowledge of 
natural science, and was able to make practical applica- 
tions of mathematics to his trade. 

The explanation of this phenomenon was found when 
he looked into the dram-shops and cafes chantants, the 
museums, workshops, quays and bookstalls: they read 
the works of Alexandre Dumas — "The Three Musket- 
eers" and "Monte Cristo," which were universally sold 
in cheap editions — and they frequented public libraries, 
theaters, especially cafes w T here forty or fifty thousand of 
people daily listened to little comedies and recitations 
and were thus instructed orally just as the Greeks and 
Romans were. 

He made no criticism of the quality of this instruction 
but approved of the principle of this unconscious school- 
ing which had undermined the compulsory schools and 
left of them only a shell, so that after five or six years of 
instruction the pupils carried away only the mechanical 
ability of putting letters together and writing down 
words. 

While Tolstoi was at Hyeres a boy of thirteen died of 
consumption. Again arose that painful question, Why 
is it? The only explanation, he WTOte in his diary, is 
to be found in the faith that there will be compensation in 
the world to come. If that does not exist then there is 
no justice and the demand for justice is a superstition. 
If justice is one of the most essential relations of man to 
man, he naturally looks for it also in his relation to the 



152 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

universe. But without a future life it cannot exist. If 
as the naturalists say expediency is the only unchange- 
able law of Nature but is absent in the highest manifesta- 
tions of men's soul, that is in love and poetry, then 
Nature has gone far beyond her aim when she gave man 
his aspirations for poetry and love. 

Thus in Tolstoi's soul was fought the old, old battle 
between skepticism and faith. It was noteworthy that 
at the very time of his brother's funeral the thought 
occurred to him to write a Materialist Gospel — a life of 
Christ as a materialist! That would surely have been 
an interesting development of his idea, formed at Sevasto- 
pol, of founding a new religion. Its John the Baptist 
would have been Count Nikolai Tolstoi, the Apostle of 
"the Ant Brotherhood." 

About the middle of December Tolstoi went to Geneva, 
where he left his sister, and thence proceeded to Italy, 
visiting Nice, Leghorn, Florence, Rome and Naples. 
Could anything in literature offer a greater contrast in the 
way of first impressions than those chronicled by Goethe 
and those by Tolstoi'? Positively all that can be said 
about his journey is that he there gained his first lively 
impressions of antiquity. Nothing in his novels or his 
critical articles shows the influence of Italy. It was a 
hasty tour; in January he was in Paris again, where as he 
told Eugene Schuyler he spent half of his time in omni- 
buses by way of amusing himself in observing the people; 
in every one he claimed to recognize one of Paul de 
Kock's characters. Schuyler was scandalized at Tol- 
stoi's praise of that brilliant but vulgar novelist, but Tol- 
stoi had the courage of his convictions : — 

"Don't tell me any of that nonsense that Paul de 
Kock is immoral," he said. " He is sometimes, according 
to English notions, improper. He is more or less what 
the French call leste and gaulois, free and rough, but he 
is never immoral. Whatever he may say in his books 
and in despite of his little loose jokes his stories are per- 



EDUCATIONAL STUDIES ABROAD 153 

fectly moral in tendency. He is the French Dickens. His 
characters are all drawn from life, and very perfectly too." 

He declared that every novelist should know Dumas 
by heart; his plots are marvelous and his technique per- 
fect. He said he could read him over and over though 
he aims chiefly at plots and intrigue. How he would 
have felt forty years later is a question, but probably if 
any one had depreciated Paul de Kock and Dumas in 
his presence he would have taken up arms in their 
defense. 

From Paris, where he was on pleasanter terms with 
Turg£nief than usual, Tolstoi proceeded to London, and 
had another encounter with his old enemy, the tooth- 
ache, nor did he get rid of it in four days, as before; it 
lasted him nearly all the six weeks of his stay. He is said 
not to have believed in dentists, as they practiced an 
artificial and unnatural profession. The natural man 
never required their aid and if civilized men suffer from 
dental disorders it is their own fault, for which they 
deserve to be punished. Patience and time wear aw r ay 
the hardest pain. 

In London he saw Aleksandr Ivanovitch Herzen, the 
famous exile, editor of Kolokol ("The Bell"), that 
wonderful revolutionary sheet which, though prohibited, 
was often found on the Emperor's table. Tolstoi had 
often spoken disparagingly of him, but while at Kissingen 
had modified his opinion, for though he called him 
a scattered intellect, sick with conceit, he acknowledged 
that he was broad, alert, and kindly — a genuine Russian. 

Herzen on his side admired Tolstoi's stories and his 
skill in treating of the most intimate feelings which no 
one had ever before expressed, but he thought his philos- 
ophy weak, hazy, and unconvincing. Their discussions 
must have been entertaining, but there was no Plato to 
serve as a reporter. 

Tolstoi, who exposed his own moral delinquencies 
so frankly, was struck by the moral delinquencies of the 



i 5 4 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

London reformer-exiles, particularly of Herzen's colla- 
borator on the Kolokol, Nikolai Platonovitch Ogaryof, 
whose estate was not far from Yasnaya and to whom he 
had lost money at the card-table before he went to the 
Caucasus. Ogaryof, though fluently advocating self- 
perfection, holy friendship, the service of science and hu- 
manity, boasted of his drunkenness and of his infidelity 
to his wife. Tolstoi says there was remarkable absence 
of consistency in the lives of all those men. They showed 
a sincere and ardent desire for the public good and be- 
lieved that they could do great deeds and yet live unregu- 
lated lives. He says they put unkneaded bread into a cold 
oven and trusted that it would bake; then as time went 
on they began to notice that the bread was still dough, in 
other words, that no good came of their lives, and it 
seemed to them tragic. 

His personal life may have been as irregular as theirs, — 
according to his "Confession," externally there was not 
much choice between them, — but he at least had the grace 
to be ashamed; he did not boast of his escapades, and he 
strove bravely to conquer himself. The difference in 
their ideals separated them from him. It is notable that 
he did not contribute to Herzen's Kdlokol, though that 
weekly then was still exerting an enormous influence 
in Russia. 

Herzen's young daughter Natalya had read "Child- 
hood, Boyhood, and Youth" and looked forward with 
the keenest interest to seeing him. She took up her 
position in her father's library and waited till the author 
appeared. Her first disappointment came when she 
saw him enter dressed in the latest fashion; her second 
when his conversation turned entirely on the coc king- 
mains and prize-fights which he had been witnessing in 
London. 

At this time Tolstoi wore a thick, dark-brown beard 
and mustache; the scar made by the bear's teeth was still 
visible on his forehead and his eyes burned vividly in very 



EDUCATIONAL STUDIES ABROAD 155 

deep sockets. He was still interested in educational 
questions and visited as many schools as possible. 
He saw Lord Palmerston sitting with his hat on, at a 
time when as a member of the opposition he was attack- 
ing the ministry, and suddenly rising replied in a three 
hours' speech in the House of Commons; he noticed a 
certain hypocrisy in his act but got little idea of what he 
was saying, his ears not being trained to English speech. 
England seemed to him u a country of the noblest ideals 
and yet of the coarsest materialism." 

Edward A. Steiner, who says he was specially attracted 
by John Ruskin, though they did not meet, makes an 
interesting comparison between the two men: "Both" 
he says, "were aristocrats to their very finger-tips, and 
both were making the way straight for the coming of a 
democracy. Both were artistic natures, yet laid great 
stress upon the value of common labor. Both formu- 
lated theories of arts in which they were not masters, and 
which have caused much shaking of heads among the 
artists. Ruskin was as intense as Tolstoi, but not so 
concentrated; he was as religious but without being so 
rationalistic. In both of them the religious element is 
an important part and both have interpreted it i in terms 
of human relations.' " 

On the third of March the Emperor Alexander II. 
issued his ukase emancipating the serfs of Russia; Tolstoi 
had already received notification that he was appointed 
an arbiter of peace {mirovo'i posrednik), an officer or 
judge whose duty it was to settle such differences as might 
arise between the proprietors and their former serfs. 
He started immediately for Russia. At Brussels he met 
Pierre Joseph Proudhon, to whom Herzen had given him 
a letter. That courageous extremist had recently been 
amnestied after his second experience in the French 
courts. The larger part of his voluminous writings was 
already before the world. Tolstoi recognized him as a 
strong, independent thinker who had le courage de son 



156 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

opinion. Proudhon's slogan that possessing private 
property is theft ( u La propriete c'est le vol") goes some- 
what beyond Tolstoi's dictum, but they were at one 
regarding peaceful anarchy, where every man should be 
restrained only by reason and conscience, and all courts, 
police, soldiery, and punishments should be abolished 
and only those should eat who earned their daily bread. 
At least this became Tolstoi's conviction, as it already 
was Proudhon's. 

He spent some weeks in Brussels and there wrote his 
story of "Polikushka," which in its somber coloring, in 
its tragic delineation of the unfairness of military con- 
scription, in its unsparing culmination of horrors, in 
letting the serf, struggling against his besetting sin, be 
driven to suicide, while the baby drowns unnoticed, 
belongs to the same class as Tolstoi's drama of "The 
Power of Darkness." In speaking of this story later, he 
called it "mere stuff which any one who wielded a pen 
might write!" 

At Weimar Tolstoi was the guest of the Russian 
ambassador, Von Maltitz, through whom he became 
acquainted with the Grand Duke Karl Alexander. Here 
also he visited the schools and was shown kindergartens 
under the guidance of their manager Minna Schelholm, a 
former pupil of Froebel's. He had an interesting experi- 
ence in a school kept by Julius Stoetrer. 

It was Good Friday. Herr Stoetrer was just about 
beginning a lesson when a pupil put his head into the 
door and said a gentleman wanted to see him. The 
stranger followed but did not mention his name; in per- 
fectly good German, so that the teacher supposed he was 
a German, he asked what lessons were to be given that 
afternoon. Then, after asking some more questions 
which Herr Stoetrer rather resented, he produced a 
memorandum-book and remarked that it looked as if 
national history had been left out. 

"No," was the answer, "the next grade is devoted to 



EDUCATIONAL STUDIES ABROAD 157 

the history of Germany. " When the regular lesson was 
finished the stranger seemed desirous of getting ideas 
about composition. He said: "I have pondered a good 
deal on a method of making thoughts flow fluently." 
So the teacher required the children to write a brief com- 
position on some topic which he named to them. That 
interested the stranger and he walked up and down 
between the desks, taking up the copy-books by turns 
and trying to make out what they said. Finally he 
asked permission to take them with him. But the teacher 
told him that the children had to pay for their copy- 
books and their parents, who were mostly in moderate 
circumstances, would be angry if they had to buy new 
ones. 

"That can be overcome/' he said, and he stepped out. 

While he was gone Herr Stoetrer sent for the head- 
master and complained of the actions of this strange 
visitor. 

"You have played a nice trick on me," he said. 
"This queer chap you sent to me wants to take away 
the children's copy-books." 

"I never did such a thing," said the head-master. 

"But you are the director of the seminary," replied 
the teacher, "and he was brought to me by one of your 
students." 

Then the head-master remembered that a high official 
had come to his office while he was out and had requested 
that every courtesy should be shown to the stranger. 

While they were talking the stranger returned bringing 
a large package of paper which he had bought. It was 
then discovered that he was Count Tolstoi' of Russia. 

So the children were bidden to copy their compositions, 
and when they had finished Tolstoi collected them and 
handed them to his servant, Aleksei. 

Stoetrer w r hen a boy had been privileged to visit 
Goethe in his garden, the same garden which a third of 
a century later Tolstoi visited, though that and Goethe's 



158 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

house were then closed to the public. Stoetrer died at an 
advanced age and never tired of relating his experiences 
with two such men as Goethe and Tolstoi. 

At Jena, Tolstoi found at the University a young Ger- 
man mathematician named Keller and engaged him to go 
to Russia as a teacher and clerk; he described him as a 
very agreeable and well-educated young man, though 
inexperienced. 

At Dresden, Tolstoi* renewed his acquaintance with 
Auerbach, whom he characterizes in his diary as "a 
most delightful man — straightforward, youthful, reverent, 
and free from the spirit of doubt." In German which 
it would be difficult to parse he wrote that a light had 
been kindled in him, and it may be that Auerbach's 
characterization of music as pjiichtloser Genuss, as unethi- 
cal pleasure, leading directly to depravity, may have 
been the seed from which grew his tragedy of "The 
Kreutzer Sonata." He remembered with approval 
Auerbach's definition of Christianity as "the spirit of 
humanity, than which nothing could be higher." 

Tolstoi was now beginning to yearn for home, though he 
felt that as long as he was in Europe and might not be 
there again he ought to make the most of his opportunities; 
and indeed he was bringing back so many impressions 
and so much information that it was as yet wholly 
uncoordinated in his mind. 

From Dresden he proceeded to Berlin and there met 
the head of the Teachers* Institute, the son of the famous 
educator Friedrich Diesterweg. He had expected to find 
an enlightened and open-minded scholar, but was dis- 
appointed in a man who seemed the very personification 
of ultra German pedantry, cold and soulless, imagining 
the minds of children could be developed and guided by 
means of rules and regulations. They spent an hour in 
discussing schools and educational matters, but the chief 
subject of their conversation was the meaning of the 
words education, instruction, and culture. 



EDUCATIONAL STUDIES ABROAD 159 

"Diesterweg," he said, " spoke with biting sarcasm 
of people who made such subdivisions, as, according to 
him, all these ran together. And yet we spoke of education, 
culture, and instruction, and we clearly understood each 
other. " 

One may be inspired by new principles and one may 
also gain new principles by seeing the ill effect of bad 
methods. Tolstoi learned by his educational tour of 
Europe what he had to avoid in conducting his beloved 
school. He realized that he must needs begin at the very 
beginning and establish an intercourse which would 
bring the scholar and the common people together and 
not set apart a privileged class to enjoy all the delights 
of learning while the masses of the people are starving 
for the very bread of life. 



VIII 

THE QUARREL WITH TURGENIEF 

Returning to Russia early in May, Tolstoi* delayed in 
Petersburg long enough to obtain authorization to publish 
a periodical which he was proposing to establish at 
Yasnaya. Then after a short delay in Moscow, waiting 
until the roads were sufficiently settled for traveling by 
carriage, he set out for his country home. He and Fyet's 
wife made the journey together, and when the evening air 
became cool he borrowed a cloak belonging to the poet 
and wrapped himself up in it, remarking that it would be 
sure to result in his producing a lyric ! 

Soon after this Turgenief wrote him from Spasskoye 
suggesting that while the nightingales were still singing 
and spring was smiling "bright, beatific, fair/' they should 
go together and invade Styepanovka, Fyet's new home, 
the estate which at Tolstoi's recommendation he had 
bought not far from Yasnaya. 

Turgenief wrote to Fy£t, also announcing his coming 
and enclosing a letter from Tolstoi congratulating him 
on his new possession, and expressing his pride that he 
had contributed no little to making a farmer of him. 
Turgenief he said he should like to see, but Fy6t ten 
times as much — it had been so long since they had seen 
each other and so many things had happened to both of 
them. Then he makes an interesting comparison 
between a friend and Nature. "A friend," he says, "is 
a good thing to have, but he may die or go away or one 
may be unable to keep pace with him, while Nature, to 
which one becomes attached by a notarial deed or by 

1 60 



QUARREL WITH TURGENIEF 161 

inheritance, may be cold, harsh, and exacting but she 
sticks to one until death and then one is absorbed into 
her. I am just now," he added, "less devoted to this 
friend, for I have other affairs which engage my interest; 
yet without the consciousness that this friend is here at 
hand and that if I stumble she is ready to help, life would 
be sad indeed." 

Tolstoi's reference to losing a friend was ominous. 
He was on the brink of an almost mortal quarrel with 
Turgenief. About the first of June, 1861, Turgenief 
and he set out together to make the promised visit to 
Fyet. They were in excellent spirits and there was 
much laughter and jolly talk w r hen they took the new 
proprietor by surprise. Fyet says that the few buildings 
on the estate at the time made Turgenief spread out his 
long arms in wonder and exclaim, "We gaze and we 
gaze, but w r here is Styepanovka? What we really see 
is a fat pan-cake and on it a lump and this is Styepanovka !" 

The first day passed pleasantly; the man cook pre- 
pared a dinner which suited Turgenief 's Lucullus-taste; 
there was plenty of good champagne; the conversation 
was lively and brilliant. After dinner the three men 
continued their discussion while strolling about the place 
and w T hile lying in the tall grass at the edge of the wood 
at a little distance from the house. 

The next morning at breakfast the family and guests 
gathered at table, Tolstoi sitting at the left, Turgenief at 
the right, of the hostess, who was making coffee from the 
boiling samovar. Fyet, who gives full details of the 
occurrence that followed, says his wife, knowing the 
importance attached by Turgenief to the education of 
his illegitimate daughter, asked him if he was pleased 
with her English governess. Turgenief w r as enthusiastic 
in his praises of her and to illustrate her characteristic 
English scrupulousness, told how she had asked him to 
designate a certain sum of money for his daughter to use 
for charitable purposes, and he added that she was now 



1 62 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

requiring his daughter to mend ragged old clothes for 
the poor. 

"And you consider that good?" demanded Tolstoi. 

"I certainly do," replied Turgenief; "it makes the 
charity-worker realize everyday needs." 

"And I think that a well-dressed girl with filthy, 
malodorous rags in her hands is acting an insincere farce," 
commented Tolstoi. 

"I ask you not to say that," exclaimed Turgenief, 
becoming hot with indignation. 

" Why should I not say what I am convinced is true ?" 
retorted Tolstoi'. 

"Then you disapprove of my manner of educating 
my daughter!" retorted Turgenief. 

Tolstoi" replied that his thought corresponded to his 
words, though he meant nothing personal. 

Fyet, seeing how matters were going, was about to 
intervene when Turgenief, white with rage, leaped to his 
feet and exclaiming, "If you say that again I will box 
your ears!" left the table and clutching his head with 
both hands rushed into the next room. He returned 
instantly and addressing Fyet's wife, said: — 

"For God's sake, excuse my rudeness, which I deeply 
regret." 

Of course two such fire-brands could not be safely 
housed under the same roof, but it was a problem how to 
get them away. Tolstoi' had come in Turgenief s car- 
riage and Fyet's horses were not wonted to his only con- 
veyance. However, they managed to drive Tolstoi to 
the nearest post-station without an accident and thence 
he went to the country-house of an acquaintance, and 
sent a letter to Turgenief demanding satisfaction. 

Turgenief immediately wrote a semi-apologetic reply to 
this, but it was sent to the wrong place. Turgenief 
wrote that, "carried away by a sense of involuntary 
enmity, the causes for which needed not to be considered," 
he had insulted Tolstoi' without any definite provocation; 



QUARREL WITH TURGENIEF 163 

but that he had already apologized. The occurrence 
seemed to prove clearly that there could be no further 
intimacy between such entirely opposite natures, but as 
this incident would terminate their relations he was 
willing to satisfy Tolstoi in any way he might demand. 

Proceeding to Boguslaf, halfway to his own estate of 
Nikdlskoye, Tolstoi after a sleepless night sent a mes- 
senger for pistols and a second letter to Turgenief with 
a blood-thirsty challenge: no mock-duel for them, with 
an exchange of futile bullets ending in clinking of cham- 
pagne-glasses; Turgenief was to come with pistols ready 
for a deadly encounter at the edge of the Boguslaf woods. 

Turgenief s letter in reply to Tolstoi's harsher letter and 
challenge declared that he would willingly face Tolstoi's 
fire in order to efface his " truly insane words"; that he 
should have uttered them, he went on to say, was so 
unlike the habits of his whole life that he could attribute 
his action to irritability caused by the extreme and con- 
stant antagonism of their views. "This is not an apology, " 
he said, "that is to say not a justification but an explana- 
tion, and therefore in parting from you forever — for such 
occurrences are indelible and irrevocable — I consider it 
my duty to repeat once again that in this affair you were 
right and I was wrong." He ended with expressing 
his willingness to fight or to give satisfaction by apology. 

Tolstoi answered this letter through Fyet, accepting 
the apology but assuring his friend that he despised 
Turgenief. "Here is the end of an unfortunate affair." 

It was not the end; for when Fyet tried to reconcile the 
foes he found himself in the position of a child who tries 
to separate two fighting dogs. Tolstoi became so in- 
censed with him that he forbade him to write again. "I 
shall return your letters unopened as well as Turgenief's," 
he said. 

Early in October Tolstoi began to relent. He was in 
Moscow and a sweet mood of universal good-will, 
humility, and love came over him. So he sat down and 



164 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

wrote a note to Turgenief asking him for his forgiveness 
if he had offended him, and saying it made him very 
unhappy to know that he had an enemy. *Instead of 
despatching it to Paris he directed it to the care of a 
bookseller in Petersburg. It was not delivered for three 
months, and in the meantime, in November, Turgenief 
wrote Fyet that on his way through Petersburg he had 
heard from certain reliable people that Tolstoi had been 
circulating copies of a letter in which he had boasted of 
" despising him." This made Turgenief so angry that 
he sent him a challenge against the time he should return 
to Russia. But when he got word from Tolstoi that the 
report did not originate with him, and that he begged 
forgiveness and declined his challenge and yet should 
consider any fresh communication as an insult, he asked 
Fyet to tell Tolstoi that the whole matter was buried 
forever. 

Several months later, in January, Turgenief received 
Tolstoi's long-delayed letter and wrote Fyet again 
rehearsing a part of the controversy and expressing his 
conclusion that their constellations moved through space 
in definitely hostile conjunction and therefore they had 
better avoid meeting. "But," he added, "you may write 
him or tell him (if you see him) that I (without phrase or 
jesting) love him from afar, that I respect him and watch 
his career with sympathetic interest, but when we are 
together everything takes a different turn. What is to 
be done? We must behave as if we lived on different 
planets or in different centuries." 

Fyet delivered this message to Tolstoi, and that caused 
another outburst of wrath which Turgenief compared to 
a tile falling on an innocent man's head. 

V. P. Botkin, a common friend of the whole circle, 
writing about the quarrel, expressed his belief that 
Tolstoi had a passionately loving soul and desired to 
love Turgenief ardently but met with only a mild, good- 
natured indifference; moreover, he said, his mind was in a 



QUARREL WITH TURGENIEF 165 

chaos, not having reached any definite outlook on life and 
the affairs of the world. That was why his convictions 
changed so often and he was so likely to run to extremes. 
His soul burned with unquenchable thirst, because what 
satisfied it one day was broken up the next by his analysis, 
but as his analysis had no durable and firm reagents its 
results evaporated into thin air. This was undoubtedly 
true. 

It has been charged that in this quarrel and in the 
strained relations that preceded it, Turgenief was actu- 
ated by jealousy of Tolstoi's rising star, but all accounts 
agree that Turgenief, though politic and not always 
sincere, was calm and generous by nature. Tolstoi, ten 
years younger, failing in deference and challenging 
everything in a disagreeable cocksureness of opposition, 
certainly did not show off to advantage. Yet Fyet made 
it evident that he sided with the younger rather than with 
the older of the two authors. 

Some years later the following event took place and 
led Tolstoi to make interesting comments on fighting 
duels. 

The police made a descent at Poltava on the house of 
M. A. Zindvief, brother of the Russian ambassador to 
Constantinople, it being suspected that he belonged to 
the Tolstoian community. Nothing incriminating was 
discovered, but all his private correspondence and the 
works of Tolstoi were carried off. 

Mr. Zindvief was very angry. A family council which 
shortly afterward was held at Petersburg and included 
Zon6vief's two brothers, both of them provincial govern- 
ors, agreed with him that this action on the part of the 
police was an outrage on people of aristocratic preten- 
sions who had always been devoted to the Emperor. 

On his return to Poltava Zinovief sought out the colonel 
who had instituted the search and after a brief parley 
provoked him to a duel. The colonel was much annoyed. 
"Very well," said he, "I will ask for authorization to 



1 66 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

fight in the duel, but will you tell me why we are going to 
fight? I only did my duty!" 

Zindvief remained obdurate. 

Two days later the Minister Goremuikin telegraphed 
the governor of Poltava to use all possible means to 
induce Zindvief to withdraw his challenge. The colonel 
returned Tolstoi's works and the correspondence, and 
the incident closed. 

When Tolstoi' was informed of it he was greatly stirred. 
"Ah! what a regrettable thing," he exclaimed. "That 
good, kind Zinovief! Why did he do such a thing? 
How strange is this impulse which hides in the depth of 
men's souls, carefully preserved by the ancient traditions 
of a vanished feudalism. Children pinch each other, 
they fly at each other like little cockerels, and that is 
laughable, for it is natural and logical; it is as natural as 
for young people to grow animated at the sound of a 
waltz and form figures for dancing. It is a good thing. 
We may try to train children to curb these violent actions 
but the violence is inborn in them. 

"When village champions pull up their sleeves and 
indulge in fisticuffs, thumping each other in their ribs or 
in their cheeks, there is nothing comical about it, for it is 
not so natural; yet even there one finds a certain naivete 
and the desire to break bones; this kind of struggle might 
be called a gymnastic trial if there were spectators to 
laugh and egg on the combatants. 

"But when two gentlemen, after removing their 
waistcoats, take their positions at a given distance and 
with one hand behind the back point the mouth of their 
pistols at each other, this is no longer natural or amusing 
or naive, it is repugnant and nasty; the act becomes 
stupid, false, artificial, though it remains martial. 

"There is nothing to be avowed in a duel; the pretext 
at first is often vile and low; it comes from a carnal lust 
or from presumptuous vanity or from exaggerated sensi- 



QUARREL WITH TURGENIEF 167 

tiveness. But what I see most reprehensible in these 
actions is the state of soul of the antagonists. 

"As a rule some little time follows the day of the 
insult; the hatred engendered at the beginning and the 
ardent desire for vengeance are mollified. And yet it is 
necessary to fight, to kill. Placed on the field, ready to 
fire, the duelists are conscious of the cruelty, of the 
infamous baseness, of the deed they are about to perform. 

"I can speak from experience. The man whom I 
sent to carry a challenge to Turgenief had scarcely 
started off, I could still hear the noise of his horse's hoofs, 
when all my anger died away and I forgave Turgenief 
the brutal words that had so stirred me to indignation; 
I could see him reading with his kindly eyes the insolent 
provocation, which perhaps was the signal for a violent 
death. And I can imagine how I should have felt if we 
had not become reconciled, if I had been compelled to 
point my weapon at him, to wait while either he or I 
should shoot. It w r ould have been atrocious for me! 
And I am sure that the majority of duelists have this 
feeling, since the reason for the meeting is almost always 
a word hastily spoken in the heat of anger. That was 
the case with Turgenief. 

"I admit the duels of antiquity, when these combats 
decided the fate of nations, as for instance the battle 
between David and Goliath. But there also the reality 
is not so beautiful as it is depicted in the romantic stories. 
We admire the victory of the little David over the enor- 
mous Goliath. But study the text and you will perceive 
that David was neither small nor feeble. Saul said to 
David, 'Thou art not able to go against this Philistine 
to fight with him, for thou art but a youth and he is a man 
of war from his youth.' David replied: 'Thy servant 
kept his father's sheep and when a hungry lion appeared, 
I went out after him, I smote him and I delivered the 
lamb out of his mouth. The lion arose against me and I 
caught him by the beard and slew him.' Young David 



168 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

was strong; he had the strength to attack the Philistine. 
It was the battle of two Hercules substituted for war, for 
a murderous collision between thousands of men. If 
the nations nowadays would have recourse to this 
method, bloody wars on land and on sea would become 
rarer. Especially if these single combats should take 
place between the chiefs of the belligerent countries. 
And perhaps, just as in the case of duelists, these leaders 
of nations would then very quickly recognize how foolish 
and idle are the pretexts for quarrels." 



IX 

AN UMPIRE OF PEACE 

Tolstoi was soon involved in other controversies, not 
less than fifteen in number. Some of them were as annoy- 
ing as that with Turgenief, but rather more creditable. 
His duties as Peace Arbiter or Umpire for the Krapivyensky 
District of Tula were responsible for them. His appoint- 
ment was resented by those of his neighbors who dis- 
approved of his methods of managing his estate and treat- 
ing his serfs. Several years before the emancipation he 
had let his serfs go on what was called obrok, that is to 
say, left them free to work for themselves with only a 
yearly tribute or tax to pay. After the emancipation he 
followed the law, giving the peasants the land they were 
cultivating, — about eight acres a head, — and he did not 
follow the common custom of compelling them to ex- 
change their lands in such a way as that they would have 
no pasture. 

The common report that he emancipated his serfs 
some years before the Emperor's manifesto is incorrect. 
He could not have done such a thing legally. The 
Marshal of Nobility of the Government of Tula wrote 
to the Minister of the Interior to complain of the ac- 
tion of the Governor in selecting Tolstoi on the ground 
that unpleasant disputes might hinder the peaceful 
settlement of such questions as would be certain to arise. 
The Minister of the Interior instituted a secret inquiry 
and received word confidentially from Lieutenant- 
General Darogdn that he was acquainted with Count 
Tolstoi* and knew him as a well-educated man who had a 
sympathetic interest in the matter, and he therefore re- 

169 



170 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

fused to replace him. The result of this correspondence 
was that Tolstoi was confirmed by the senate and imme- 
diately took up the work. 

As might be expected he generally sided with the 
peasants against those proprietors who would have taken 
advantage of their ignorance. Thus when one landowner 
complained that her serf had left her, considering him- 
self a free man, Tolstoi upheld the muzhik and made his 
mistress pay him for three and a half weeks' of illegal 
work and compensate the man's wife for an assault made 
upon her. This decision was appealed, was set aside by 
the Assembly of Peace Umpires, but was reversed and up- 
held by the provincial court. 

In another case peasants were tilling a field and 
allowed their horses to graze in the meadow of a neigh- 
boring landowner, who complained to Tolstoi*. Tolstoi, 
knowing that the peasants had some reason to complain 
of this proprietor, asked him to overlook the matter, but 
he refused and insisted that they should pay him a fine 
of eighty rubles. Tolstoi took three muzhiks from a 
neighboring village as referees : they assessed the dam- 
ages at thirty rubles. Tolstoi thought this excessive 
and reduced it to fifteen. The landowner complained 
that Tolstoi was enriching the peasants at the expense of 
the proprietors; when the District Assembly of Umpires 
demanded of Tolstoi an explanation, he refused to give 
any, stating that he had simply obeyed the law. 

In another case a landowner seized his muzhiks' 
possessions by declaring them to be dvordvuie liudi or 
house servants, and the law did not provide for that class 
of serfs. Tolstoi followed the matter up until he suc- 
ceeded in getting their holdings for them. He also did 
his best to protect the peasantry from small landowners 
who tried to allot the peasants sma'ler parcels of land 
and of worse quality than was called for. 

In one case Tolstoi issued a leave-of-absence to a house 
serf and when complaint was lodged against him he 




Count L. N. Tolstoi, 1862. 



AN UMPIRE OF PEACE 171 

acknowledged that he had made a mistake, and offered 
to compensate the proprietor. 

In still another case, where a village had been partly 
burned, the landowner refused to allow the peasants to 
rebuild on the same spot, but required them to move 
their homesteads and yet refused to give them any 
money for new buildings or free them from the bdrshchina 
or obligatory work or even allow them needful time. 
Tolstoi saw that the demands of the muzhiks were reason- 
able but also that the landowner was ruined and unable 
to satisfy their demands. Therefore he appealed to the 
other nobles of the district to help him extricate both 
parties from their difficulties. His plea was dismissed 
and all his efforts were in vain. So he refused to sit in 
the district assembly, and this again created ill feeling. 

His smypathy with the peasantry was exceedingly dis- 
tasteful to the proprietors; they charged him with pro- 
voking rebellion, with encouraging them to commit 
unlawful acts, and with bringing about a state of anarchy. 
He received threatening letters, a plot was formed to have 
him beaten; it was planned to provoke him into a duel; 
many complaints were lodged against him, most of them 
having no legal justification, and almost every decision 
that he gave was reversed ; and the fact that the peasants 
put implicit confidence in him was charged against him. 

So annoyed was he by these experiences that in March, 
1862, he informed the Government Board of Peasant 
Affairs that he was handing over his office to a deputy. 
He made one more sporadic attempt to do the impossible 
work and then again withdrew on the ground of ill 
health. Ill health was the ostensible excuse preferred 
by the Senate in removing him from the only civil office 
that he ever held. There may have been some truth in 
it, for in his diary after only three months' experience 
he noted that his post had given him little material for 
his literary work, had spoiled his relations with the land- 
owners, and had upset his health. 



1 72 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

How unfair was the charge that he always sided with 
the peasants against his own class is shown by one 
instance where, a dispute having arisen regarding a certain 
allotment, Tolstoi repaired to the estate in company with 
his "little land-surveyor," as he jestingly called a peasant- 
boy of twelve who carried the Gunther's chain, and there 
received a deputation of two village elders and a member 
of the village council, who wanted him to grant them 
more land than their former barin could afford to give. 
They pleaded with him and they wheedled him and they 
called him Bdtyushka, "little father," but Tolstoi was 
obdurate: he crossed himself and said, "In the name of 
the Holy God, I swear that I cannot do as you wish," 
and at the end of an hour, in which he had exhausted 
every argument and himself into the bargain, the count, 
who had been patient all through, exclaimed: "One 
might, like Amphion, move the hills and woods, but it is 
impossible to convince peasants of anything." 

The routine of his functions he sadly neglected. The 
first charter that he sent to the Government Board for 
registering the new relations between a pomyeshchik 
and his former "souls" well illustrates this carelessness. 
Tolstoi's servant had written at his dictation that, at the 
request of certain peasants unable to write, the house serf 
So-and-so had signed the charter for them. But the name 
of neither landowner nor serf was attached to the precious 
document. Tolstoi sent it off without even glancing at 
it. Prince Obolyensky's step-father received it, but being 
a kinsman of Tolstoi's, only shrugged his shoulders. 

It is a rather curious commentary on Tolstoi's shifting 
views that he who argued so weightily against the effi- 
ciency of great generals in conducting wars should have 
asserted at a dinner at Tula that the Emperor Alexander, 
the Tsar-liberator, was the only person responsible for 
the reform. "I drink to that toast with particular 
pleasure," he cried, "no other toasts are needed!" 

In an article on "Progress" published later, he argued 



AN UMPIRE OF PEACE 173 

that printing had been of little use to the people; he could 
not see that the power of the press helped toward the 
solution of the problem. Most of the periodicals, he 
declared, would have demanded the emancipation of the 
peasants without endowing them with any land and 
would have produced reasonable, witty and sarcastic 
arguments in favor of that method. 

Eugene Schuyler in a letter printed in November, 
1868, tells how he asked Tolstoi* what he thought had 
been the effect of the emancipation. Tolstoi replied that 
he had been a supporter of the measure but had come to 
the conclusion that it had been premature — had been 
reached by the reasoning of theorists and had not been 
brought about by the demand of the people or by the 
necessity of the case. It had therefore been injurious to 
the peasantry; their live-stock — the index of their pros- 
perity — was constantly diminishing and very few of the 
peasants had seized the opportunity of buying land; 
they used their new freedom for doing less work than 
before and spent most of their time in drinking-houses. 



X 

EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES 

During all these months he was also occupying himself 
enthusiastically with educational matters. It was a stren- 
uous year. He says that he was Umpire of Peace, school- 
teacher, journalist and author, and that he nearly ruined 
his health by his tasks, the friction in his court was so 
great and his work in the school so unsatisfactory. 

It was unsatisfactory for two reasons: First, because 
it was in the nature of an entirely radical experiment, 
a complete departure from anything that had ever 
been tried before, at least in Russia. Nearly forty years 
earlier the American educator, Amos Bronson Alcott, 
had attracted wide attention by theories and practice 
very similar to those which Tolstoi was developing 
apparently on independent lines. Alcott believed in 
awakening the child's mind in complete independence 
without imposing any ideas from external sources, and 
encouraged his pupils to express their ideas both in 
speech and in writing. 

Tolstoi' says that he first took up the matter of popular 
education without any preconceived theories or views 
on the subject and was immediately confronted with two 
questions: What was he to teach and how was he to 
teach? In trying to answer these questions he was 
puzzled with a great diversity of opinions. In Russian 
literature there was nothing to help, and after turning 
to the literature of Europe, and making a personal 
investigation of many of the school systems of Germany, 
France, and England and talking with the so-called best 
representatives of the science of education, he utterly 

174 



EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES 175 

failed even there to find any answer. Moreover, he 
became convinced that the science of education did not 
recognize any such questions, since every educator seemed 
firmly convinced that the methods that he used were the 
best, being founded on absolute truth. He therefore 
returned to make empirical essay of an inchoate idea. 

While he was Peace Umpire fourteen schools were 
opened in his district, which contained ten thousand 
"souls"; there were besides the ten schools supported by 
the clergy and by the proprietors, while in the whole 
Government of Tula there were fifteen large schools and 
thirty small ones. They were kept in accordance with 
the general customs obtaining at that time. 

Tolstoi was not content to support a school on his 
estate; he wanted to try out his theories himself. He 
says he began to experiment on new lines and, because 
compulsion in education was repulsive to him both by 
conviction and by his character, he exerted no pressure 
on his students to make them accept what he offered them, 
but as soon as he noticed that anything was not readily 
received he abandoned it and tried something else. 
These experiments convinced him and his teachers as 
well that nearly everything written about schools was 
separated by a world-wide abyss from the truth. He was 
on the right track, but the question why his method was 
better than any others hitherto devised was as far from 
solution as ever. 

He would have been pleased had his theories been 
contradicted by those competent to discuss them, but he 
found that his questions, when put, met with absolute 
indifference. 

He published at his own expense for a year his educa- 
tional magazine, Ydsnaya Polyana, in which he printed 
his now famous descriptions of the school as it was con- 
ducted, as well as various theoretical, controversial 
and argumentative articles. Each number contained 
also reports of the progress of the schools, a bibliography, 



176 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

a description of school libraries, lists of donations and a 
supplement in the form of a reading-book. It naturally 
had a small circulation and complete files of the twelve 
numbers are eagerly sought by book collectors. The late 
Eugene Schuyler brought one home and presented it to 
the library of Cornell University. In the complete 
editions of Tolstoi's works, both in Russian and English, 
may be found extracts from his articles, giving an 
excellent notion of this famous though short-lived pub- 
lication and of the school in the interest of which it 
was published. 

Mr. Aylmer Maude says very pertinently that Tolstoi 
showed in his educational work the qualities and limi- 
tations which in later years marked all his propagandist 
activity: " There was the same characteristic selection 
of a task of great importance; the same readiness to 
sweep aside and condemn nearly all that civilized hu- 
manity had accomplished up to then; the same assurance 
that he could untie the Gordian knot; and the same 
power of devoted genius enabling him really to achieve 
more than one would have supposed possible, though 
not a tithe of what he set himself to do." 

He showed himself a prophet when he declared that 
it was hopeless in Russia for any educational reform to 
come from above, and that the peasantry would see in 
any national school system only a new means of increasing 
their taxes. 

He also used all the powers of his irony to show how 
little advantage came to the peasantry of a country by 
what we boast are the fruits of progress — telegraphs, 
railways and the like. He is of course quite right in his 
claim that the combined forces of the millions are of more 
value and importance to a country than those of the 
thousands of the cultured classes, but it is not difficult 
to detect the flaw in his argument or in its application. 

Judging the school from Tolstoi's own descriptions, one 
can easily see that his ability to arouse the interest of the 



EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES 177 

pupils was what stimulated their intellects. It was cer- 
tainly accomplished largely by his own personality, by 
what he called "a sort of pedagogic tact," by his wonder- 
ful power as a novelist. For instance, in his second 
lesson in history, which he declared remained a mem- 
orable event in his life, the class began as usual in a state 
of chaos; Tolstoi told the children about the invasion of 
Russia by Napoleon, and by his skill in narration he kept 
them awake long beyond their bedtime. A German 
who was present criticised his narration as being told 
from a w T holly Russian standpoint. 

Tolstoi frankly says that he fully agreed with him that 
his narration was not history but a fanciful tale to rouse 
the national sentiment. The idea of teaching history 
by means of fiction seems to have been suggested by the 
American Manuals of Samuel Griswold Goodrich, bet- 
ter known as "Peter Parley." Tolstoi came to the con- 
clusion, however, that there was no necessity of teaching 
history or geography to a boy before going to the Uni- 
versity, and he was not certain that it would not do harm 
even then. On the other hand he found the teaching 
of the Bible easily awoke the enthusiasm of the children 
and their parents, and he came to the conclusion that 
without the Bible the development of the child or the 
man would be as impossible as it would have been in 
Greek society to ignore Homer. "The publication of a 
translation of the Bible in the simple language used by 
the peasants," he said, "would form an epoch in the his- 
tory of the Russian people." 

If every teacher had that divine ability of kindling 
interest, one might almost be safe in saying that the 
educational value of the instruction given w r ouldbe entirely 
apart from the value of the subject taught. A child so 
stimulated might be left to guide himself and would ulti- 
mately, no matter what he might learn quite erroneously 
(as in the case of Count Tolstoi's history lesson) , be sure 



178 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

to follow the light that had attracted his eyes until he 
came out into the truth. 

So it was at the Yasnaya Polyana School. For weeks 
no progress was made in the art of reading; suddenly out of 
a feeling of rivalry with a lad who had accidentally been 
earlier and better trained than the rest, the children 
began of their own accord to apply their minds to reading, 
and they succeeded. So it was with writing; the teacher 
introduced writing from copies; the pupils took no in- 
terest in it, but after they had been set to work to write 
out some Bible stories in which they were really interested 
and discovered them to be too badly copied to take 
home, they were moved to ask for fresh paper, and 
quickly a fashion for calligraphy set in and they made 
great progress. 

Tolstoi had little belief in teaching geography in 
schools, and was dubious about its use in universities, 
but it is quite possible that if the pupils' interest had been 
properly awakened, even though "the coachman might 
drive a man to his destination," this subject would have 
been found as fascinating as Old Testament stories. 
But moving pictures and the stereopticon had not at that 
time taken their place in the school curriculum. 

Still more successful from the standpoint of interest 
were the lessons in literary composition, where the pupil 
was the veteran author and the teachers were the naive 
and enthusiastic peasant lads Fyedka and Syomka, who 
showed extraordinary imagination as well as judgment, 
sense of proportion, restraint and power of expression. 
The whole long account of the three days' collaboration 
of Tolstoi and these embryo novelists, in writing a story 
to illustrate a popular proverb, the tragedy of the acci- 
dental destruction of the manuscript, and the clever repro- 
duction of it by Fyedka and Syomka, may all be found in 
the volume of Tolstoi's educational writings. That story 
and several others by his peasant pupils were published in 
his magazine and seemed to Tolstoi juster, saner, and 



EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES 179 

more moral than those written by adults; they greatly 
influenced his literary art. The children's interest in 
writing, in drawing and in music made him realize that 
art was immensely important to the millions of the com- 
mon people and he came to the conclusion that all that 
had been done in music and poetry, as it had been pro- 
duced for those whose minds were vitiated by a false 
education, lacked importance, had no future, and was 
insignificant in comparison with what the people them- 
selves had spontaneously uttered in those branches. 

He himself had only recently had his attention attracted 
to the beauties of Pushkin's works — curiously enough in a 
French translation by Merimee; he loved Beethoven but 
did not hesitate to declare that Pushkin's most admired 
poem and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony were not so 
absolutely and universally good as certain Russian folk- 
songs and melodies; " Pushkin and Beethoven please us," 
he says," not because they are absolutely beautiful but 
because we are perverted and they flatter our abnormal 
sensitiveness and weakness." He argued that to enjoy the 
beautiful no preparation was necessary. 

On the other hand he claimed that the result of his 
endeavors and of the endeavors of hundreds of other 
teachers to develop poetic feeling is to kill it. He be- 
lieved that the need of enjoying art and of serving art was 
inherent in every human being and that it should be sat- 
isfied, and he laid it down as an axiom that if the enjoy- 
ment and production of art by every one involve incon- 
veniences and inconsistencies the fault lies in the direction 
which art has taken and in its character. He even 
doubted if it were worth while for the people to learn 
the rudiments, as there exist no good books for the 
people either in Russia or in Europe and as the rudiments 
signified prolonged conditions of compulsion, dispro- 
portionate development, false notions of the complete- 
ness of science, the aversion to further education, false 
vanity and the habit of reading meaningless literature. 



i8o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

In appealing to the interest and kindling it, Count Tolstoi 
had unwittingly touched the primal spring of all educa- 
tion worthy of the name; and this phase of the Yasnaya 
Polyana School, whether displayed in music, in history, or 
in composition, is worth all his theorizing and vain search 
for satisfactory definitions. But neither his controver- 
sial articles, nor his drastic condemnation of universities 
(training not such men as humanity needs but such as a 
corrupt society wants) and of all other ready-made institu- 
tions, seemed to attract the slightest attention. Two 
articles, indeed, were published in the Sovremennik in 
the year 1862. The author of one, Markof, upheld the 
right of compulsory education which Tolstoi* denied and 
expressed approval of contemporary systems of instruc- 
tion. He praised the Yasnaya School but held that it was 
inconsistent with its founder's theories. Tolstoi' replied 
to this article, reasserting his former views. He declared 
that his theories, — that freedom should be granted to 
pupils to select what they would learn and how they would 
learn it — formed a sound basis for instruction and that 
when it was applied to practice it always produced good 
results — good for the pupils and good for the teachers, 
as was evident to the hundreds of visitors who came to 
see the working of the school. The teachers were alert 
to discover and apply new methods, the pupils learned 
eagerly and begged to have additional lessons in the 
winter, and the most friendly and natural relations existed 
among the teachers and pupils. 

The Yasnaya Polyana School was perfectly free; no one 
paid for instruction; there was no attempt at discipline— 
unless, as sometimes happened, Tolstoi for a moment 
forgot himself and pulled a pupil's hair or slapped him 
in a moment of irritability : even that was only carrying out 
the method of perfect naturalness! Tolstoi's articles 
show his own relations with the children, talking and 
walking with them as might an older brother; and a visitor 
to the school relates how he saw him come rushing through 




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EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES 181 

a gate pursued by a horde of shouting children who 
were snowballing him. Tolstoi was trying to escape 
their friendly attentions, but when he saw his visitor he 
surrendered at discretion. On one occasion, many years 
later, the schoolmaster was reading to the children Ne- 
krasof's poem, "Vlas." The thirty boys and girls were 
listening intently when in came Tolstoi's sons and their 
cousin Misha. Misha w r as mischievous and jumped on a 
boy's back and pulled his ear. "Let me go! You hurt 
me!" cried the child. The class was annoyed. The 
schoolmaster tried in vain to go on, but Misha made still 
more disturbance. Then the schoolmaster told Vanya, 
the son of the village cobbler, a big, flat-faced muzhitchok, 
to put him out. This Vanya did with the assistance of 
the others. They lugged him into the store-room and 
locked him in. 

Just then Tolstoi came along. He asked what the 
trouble was. 

"Open, Uncle Leon!" 

"I have not the right! Promise your comrades not to 
annoy them any more." 

He promised and was let out, his face red, his hands 
covered with soot from having tried to climb out through 
the chimney. 

"What a shame! You'd have made a fine negro 
coming out through the stove!" 

One of the children recalled the verse from "Vlas": — 

"The Ethiopians are black and their eyes shine like coals." 

Tolstoi' drew his lesson from the episode: the children 
should not have used force on Misha to punish him; but 
they were saved by having also punished themselves, and 
their practice of reason tended to develop their faculties. 



XI 

COLLISIONS WITH OFFICIALS 

Sixteen years later Tolstoi in his " Confession" told 
how on his return from abroad he occupied himself with 
peasant schools, a work particularly to his taste because 
in it he did not have to meet the falsity which had stared 
him in the face when he tried to teach people by literary 
means. 

But even here, he says, the same old question arose: 
How to teach without knowing what ? 

In the higher spheres of literary activity he realized 
that one could teach "without knowing what," because 
the teachers all taught differently and hid their ignorance 
from one another while they quarreled among them- 
selves; but he thought to evade the difficulty with the 
peasant children by letting them learn what they liked. 
And yet, in the depths of his soul, he knew very well 
that he could not teach anything needful, for he did not 
know what was useful. 

Then, he says, he went abroad again to discover how to 
teach others, though he himself knew nothing; and he 
deemed that he had succeeded in this object abroad, and 
so on his return he busied himself with his arbitration 
work, his schools and his magazine; but he became 
so exhausted that he fell ill mentally rather than physic- 
ally, threw up everything and went away to the Bashkirs 
in the steppes, to breathe fresh air, drink kumys, and 
live an animal life. 

He set off in May, 1862, accompanied by his servant 
Aleksei and two schoolboys. From Moscow they went 

182 



COLLISIONS WITH OFFICIALS 183 

by rail to Tver on the Volga, then down the river by 
steamer to Samara. Already the change was beginning 
to do him good; he wrote in his diary on the first day 
of June that he seemed to be reawakening to life and 
to an understanding of it. And yet he was haunted by 
the thought of the absurdity of the belief in Progress 
and was impelled to discuss it with every one whom he 
met — the wise and the foolish, old men and children. 
At Kazan he had time to pay a call on his relative Vladi- 
mir Ivanovitch Yushkof. At Samara, just as he w r as 
about to set out on a ninety-mile drive to Karaluik, he 
wrote his aunt to tell her that he had enjoyed a beauti- 
ful journey through a country which gave him great 
delight and that his health was improving and his cough 
was troubling him less. 

A month later he wrote rather impatiently demanding 
news about the family and the school and reporting that 
he and Aleksei' had grown stout. They were living in 
a Tartar kibitka. He had found his friend Stoluipin 
(father of the late reactionary Russian prime minister) at 
Uralsk, where he was ataman, or Cossack commander, 
and had driven over to see him and brought back a 
secretary, but under the lazy conditions of kumys-drinking 
had not succeeded in writing or dictating anything of 
importance. He was tormented by the lack of news in 
that out-of-the-way place and also by the consciousness 
that he was sadly behind with the publication of his 
journal. He would have been still more tormented if he 
had known what was going on at Yasnaya Polyana. 

Revolutionary proclamations had been appearing in 
Petersburg, and the police were keen to discover the 
presses where they were printed. It was hinted to the 
authorities by some crafty enemy of the former Umpire 
of Peace that it was quite possible that certain leaflets 
calling for propagandist cooperation were printed at the 
office of a country magazine. As it happened, Yasnaya 
Polyana was printed by Mikhail N. Katkof at Moscow. 



1 84 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

The bait was taken, however. Markof, who was an 
eye-witness, gives a lively account of what happened. 
He and a friend named Auerbach were spending the 
summer at a house about six kilometers distant. They 
were hastily summoned to the assistance of Tolstoi's 
old aunt and his sister, who, with her children, was there 
on a visit. The two men hastened to Yasnaya, and this 
is what they found: — 

" There were post-chaises drawn by troikas with their 
bells, conveyances of neighbors, the head of the police 
district, the commissary of rural police, local policemen, 
witnesses, and in addition to all this — gendarmes. 

"The colonel of the gendarmes arrived with a great 
jingling and bustle at the head of this fearful expedition 
into Tolstoi's peaceful abode, to the great consternation 
of the village. After some difficulty we succeeded in 
entering the house. The poor ladies were almost fainting. 
Everywhere there were watchmen, everything was opened, 
shifted about, and turned upside down — tables, drawers, 
wardrobes, chests of drawers, boxes, caskets, and the 
like. In the stables crowbars were used to lift the floors; 
the ponds in the park were dragged with nets in order to 
catch the criminal printing-press, instead of which only 
innocent carp and crabs made their appearance. 

" Of course, at first, the unfortunate school had been 
turned upside down; but the searchers, apparently finding 
nothing there, went in the same noisy, bustling pro- 
cession, with sounding bells, to pay a visit to all the 
seventeen schools of the district, everywhere turning 
over tables and ransacking cupboards, carrying off 
exercise-books and school manuals, putting teachers 
under arrest, and creating the wildest conjectures in the 
heads of the peasants, who were generally unfavorable 
to the schools." 

Prince Obolyensky says in his Memoirs that one reason 
for the perquisition was that most of the teachers were 
University students and therefore the authorities were 



COLLISIONS WITH OFFICIALS 185 

opposed to the school, and suspected that there was some- 
thing unsound about it. He says that in one room the 
attention of an officer was attracted by a photographic 
apparatus, then a novelty. 

"What is that?" sternly demanded the officer. 

One of the student-teachers replied with serio-comic 
intent that it was kept thereto photograph the redoubtable 
Herzen. The officer saw that he was being chaffed and 
went out biting his lip. The most outrageous part of 
the visitation was perpetrated by the police commissioner 
of Tula, who detained the Countess Marya while, in the 
presence of two gendarmes, he read aloud Tolstoi's 
correspondence and private diary, w T hich he had been 
keeping with unexampled frankness for more than a 
quarter of a century. 

When the news of this was brought to Tolstoi, he was 
furious. He afterwards remarked that it was exceed- 
ingly fortunate that he was not at home, for if he had 
been the police would certainly have arrested him for 
murder. 

He wrote his Aunt Aleksandra Tolstaya a long letter, 
bitterly complaining that all the activity in which he had 
found solace and happiness had been spoiled. His Aunt 
Tatyana was so ill from fright that she would probably 
not recover. The peasants no longer regarded him as 
an upright man but looked on him as a criminal, an 
incendiary or a counterfeiter, who hitherto had escaped 
detection only by his cunning. The unfriendly pomyesh- 
chiks were in a state of rapture. The only way out of 
the difficulty was for him to receive an apology from the 
authorities as publicly as the outrage had been committed. 

He proclaimed that he was going to sell his estate and 
leave Russia. He felt especially sore that the visitation 
should have been made when he was away from home, 
and he made up his mind that he would complain 
directly to the Emperor. 

This he succeeded in doing. When Alexander II. 



i86 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

chanced to be in Moscow a little later, Tolstoi met him 
as he was walking in the Alexandra Gardens and person- 
ally handed him his protest. The Emperor took it and 
is said to have sent an aide to apologize. 

An amusing correspondence took place in consequence : 
the Minister of the Interior wrote the Minister of Public 
Instruction that after reading the Ydsnaya Polyana 
review he had discovered incorrect and injurious ideas 
and a general tendency to attack the fundamental rules 
of religion and morality, and he felt that the continuation 
of the review in the same spirit must be considered all the 
more dangerous because the editor was a man of remark- 
able, not to say fascinating, talent. 

The Minister of Public Instruction ordered all the 
printed numbers of the review to be brought to him and 
read them with great care. He informed the Minister 
of the Interior that he agreed with his subordinates in 
finding nothing subversive to religion in the review, and 
though there were expressions of extreme views they 
were proper subjects for criticism in scientific educational 
publications, but not calling for prohibition by the censor. 
He concluded with a rather remarkable expression of 
respect for Tolstoi as an educator and a determination 
to help and encourage him even though he did not share 
all his views. 

A few years later he had still another unpleasant 
encounter with Russian bureaucratic methods. A bull 
on his estate had gored the keeper and killed him. The 
investigating magistrate, who was also the coronor, dis- 
tinguished more for zeal than for discretion, held Tolstoi 
responsible for carelessness in keeping cattle and began 
criminal proceedings against him, compelling him to agree 
in writing not to leave Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoi was 
extremely indignant, and one morning, having spent 
some time exposed to the arrogant and impertinent ques- 
tions of this young chinovnik, he arrived late at a hunt 
on the estate of his friend, Prince Obolyensky. He told 



COLLISIONS WITH OFFICIALS 187 

how one of his peasants had been kept in jail a year and 
a half on suspicion of having stolen a cow which was 
proved to have been stolen by some one else. "He will 
confine me for a year!" exclaimed Tolstoi. "It is 
ridiculous and shows how perfectly arbitrary these men 
are. I am going to sell all I have in Russia and go to 
England, where every man's rights are respected. Here 
every police-officer, if you don't grovel at his feet, can 
play you the meanest tricks. " 

P. F. Samarin, the Marshal of the Nobility for Tula, 
was present and took the other side, and actually con- 
vinced Tolstoi that, after all, the mutilation and death of 
a man could hardly be allowed to pass without a judicial 
investigation. "What a remarkable power at calming 
people Samarin has!" remarked Tolstoi, as he went to 
bed that night. 

There were several reasons which led Tolstoi to give 
up his magazine and also to close his school. The 
twelve numbers which he issued caused him an expense 
of three thousand rubles; the cost of his school, which 
required the services of four teachers and w r hich brought 
him in no financial returns, was considerable. He was 
annoyed by the well-meant but annoying interference of 
numerous visitors who were attracted by curiosity or by 
interest in such a novel experiment. Moreover, he was 
by no means certain that he was accomplishing any 
definitely valuable results. 

Either on his way to Samara or when returning from 
that visit to the Bashkirs, while at Moscow, he once 
more yielded to his besetting temptation to gamble. He 
played at Biksa Kitaisky, or Chinese billiards, and lost a 
thousand rubles, or about seven hundred and fifty dol- 
lars. As he had not the ready money to pay this "debt 
of honor," he secured from Mikhail Katkdf, editor of 
the Moscow Vyedomosti and the monthly Moscow Vyest- ■ 
nik, an advance on his novel, "The Cossacks," on which 
he had been at work in a desultory way for ten years 



1 88 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

and intended to lengthen by the addition of a second part. 
Shortly after this he dropped into the house of Dr. Behrs 
and told the family joyfully that he had just sold his novel. 
They thought the honorarium very low, and when he 
explained that he was obliged to do it the three girls felt 
so badly that they wept. 

Turgenief heard from Botkin about the transaction 
and wrote Fyet, " God grant he return to his true work, 
if even in this way." 

It was published in the Russky Vyestnik in the fol- 
lowing January and was immediately acclaimed as a 
masterpiece. Nevertheless, the circumstances of its pre- 
mature appearance and what he considered its incom- 
pleteness, and the disagreeable associations, made it re- 
pugnant to him. After it was published he told Fy£t 
that it had some stuff in it, though poor! 

It seems complete in itself; it ends inevitably like every 
perfect work of art. It is full of atmosphere; one can 
almost smell the acrid odor of the burning dung used on 
the Terek for fuel; the descriptions are vivid and natural; 
the episodes are full of life and the characters are well- 
differentiated and sympathetic, especially the principal 
four — Olyenin, the Moscow aristocrat, weary of dissipa- 
tion and yearning for a new and wholesomer existence; 
Maryanka, the handsome Cossack maiden who would 
not have been averse to love Olyenin as his mistress — 
sexual morality being judged by a different standard 
among the Grebensk Cossacks — but not as his wife; 
Lukashka, the superb young jigit — and Uncle Yeroshka, 
the old huntsman. 

Comparable with one of Gogol's pictures of Cossack life 
is the night-scene where Lukashka, expecting a raid from 
the Tchetchens, stands watching the flow of the broad 
river. His companions are asleep; he alone watches 
through the night. He sees the heat-lightning occasion- 
ally flashing in the distance. The reeds whisper together; 
the gnats buzz in the warm night air; the water ripples; 



COLLISIONS WITH OFFICIALS 189 

now and then the earth caves in with a splash; a fish 
leaps; an owl flies by on hurrying wings. Daybreak 
approaches. Lukashka, still on the watch, sees a dry 
branch making its way slowly across the current. He 
realizes that there is a Tchetchenets behind the log, 
guiding its motion. He lifts his musket and waits. 
Then he catches a glimpse of the man and drawing a 
long breath and murmuring, "In the name of the Father 
and the Son, . . . " shoots. 

His aim is good; the Tchetchenets, shot through the 
head, lets go the log, which, rocking and rolling, floats 
swiftly down the stream. The Cossacks gallop down to 
the river. Then cautiously they bring their fish ashore 
and fling him on the grass. What a scene for a painter! 
The savage w T ith his yellow skin and oddly trimmed 
beard, w r ith nothing on but his wet, dark blue cotton 
trousers, girdled tightly about the fallen belly, the muscu- 
lar arms lying stiffly along the sides, the livid, freshly 
shaven round head with the gory wound, the glassy eyes 
still open showing the pupils and seeming to look up 
beyond them all, the good-natured and shrewd smile 
hovering still over the thin parted lips under the short- 
cropped mustache, and in contrast, Lukashka all dripping, 
his eyes brighter than usual and his cheeks trembling, 
while from his fair healthy body a visible vapor rises into 
the cool morning air. 

No less vivid is the ransom of the body and the battle 
of the hayricks. 

Olyenin himself is perhaps more interesting as depict- 
ing Tolstoi torn between his fiercely passionate impulses 
and the yearning to lead an ideally moral and altruistic 
life. 

Turgenief, writing to Fyet, tells how he went into ecsta- 
sies over " The Cossacks," but he felt strongly that the per- 
sonality of Olyenin spoiled the generally magnificent im- 
pression. He declared that in order to contrast civilization 
with fresh primitive Nature there was no need of conjuring 



i 9 o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

up once more that dull, morbid character, always so pre- 
occupied with himself. " Why doesn't Tolstoi get rid of 
that incubus ?" he asked. But he will appear again and 
again — in " War and Peace," in "Anna Karenina" and 
in " Resurrection. " 



PART III 

FAMILY LIFE 

I 

MARRIAGE 

The hero of "Family Happiness" is represented as 
being an elderly man who makes the experiment of 
taking for his wife a fresh young girl. Tolstoi was pre- 
paring to make the same experiment in his own life, 
although the outcome of it, as told by the heroine, was not 
depicted in colors likely to give it a glamour in the eyes of a 
romantic maiden. 

Tolstoi had been long intimate at the house of Dr. 
Behrs, w T hose wife, it will be remembered, had inspired 
him with the pangs of jealousy when he w T as a child. 
Fyet describes her as "a beautiful and stately brunette, 
evidently the ruler of the household. " There were three 
daughters, who had been carefully educated. Fyet says 
that they were perfectly modest and yet had what the 
French call le charme du chien — the charm of liveliness. 
The youngest daughter, Tanya, had a beautiful contralto 
voice and Tolstoi used to play her accompaniments and 
called her Mme. Viardot. It was generally supposed 
that he was interested in Liza, the eldest. The Behrs 
family went in the summer to the estate of Pokrovskoye, 
which had belonged to Mrs. Behrs's father, Islenyef. It 
was about twelve kilometers from Yasnaya Polyana. 
Tolstoi used to go there on foot and then take them on 
long walks. On one^ occasion he drove with the four 
ladies from there to Ivitsa, about fifty kilometers. On 
their way they stopped two days at Yasnaya Polyana and 

191 



i 9 2 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

all of them took part in a picnic and climbed up on a hay- 
stack, watching the hay-makers. 

Tolstoi was studying these young ladies. He liked 
their spirit; they could speak three or four languages 
fluently, they were musical and they were practical; they 
knew how to manage a household. He was very desirous 
of establishing himself, but he was not sure of his own 
mind. In his diary under the date of September 4, he 
wrote that he was afraid of himself: "What if this 
should be only a craving for love and not real love ? I 
try to notice her weak points — but still I love. " 

Three days later he speaks of walking to Pokrovskoye and 
of feeling calm and serene. Sonya, the second daughter, 
who had passed a University examination and was enti- 
tled to give lessons in private families, handed him a story 
written by herself. He was pleased with her truthfulness 
and simplicity but though he claimed that he had read it 
without agitation, without any feelings of envy or jealousy, 
he was rather hard hit by her description of the hero as 
being "exceedingly unattractive in appearance and of 
changeable convictions. " He was relieved to find that 
nothing personal was intended. 

Two days later, on his birthday — he was now thirty- 
four — he got up, feeling sad, convinced that he stood 
alone, having no friends, those who had pretended to 
be friends when he served Mammon, dropping away 
now that he was trying to serve the Truth. ..." Ugly 
phiz!" he exclaimed, "do not think of marrying! Your 
vocation is of another kind and you have talent for it!" 

A few days after the picnic, Tolstoi also appeared at 
Ivitsa, where the Behrs family were making Mrs. Behrs's 
brother a fortnight's visit; and here he came to an under- 
standing with Sofiya Andreyevna. He was sitting with her 
at a card-table and wrote the initial letters of each word 
of a sentence which he left to her wit to interpret. It 
was as if he had written in English: I. y. f. a. f. o. e. 
a. y. s. L. a. m. Y. a. I s. c. i. This signified: — 




Countess Tolstaya in i860, before her Marriage. 



MARRIAGE 193 

In your family a false opinion exists about your sister 
Liza and me. You and I should correct it. 

Sofiya Andreyevna afterward declared she could not 
understand how she made out to read the words. 

It was a kind of thought-transference; as she said to 
Biryukof: "It must be true that souls attuned to each 
other give out the same sound, like unisonant strings. " 

She interpreted it correctly; then he wrote again: — 

Y. y. a. n. o. h. r. m. t. p. o. m. a. a. t. i. o. h. 

She read that also correctly: Your youth and need of 
happiness remind me too powerfully of my age and the 
impossibility of happiness. 

The same sentences in Russian would require fewer 
words. But her cleverness at reading his hieroglyphics 
made a deep impression on him', and on her name-day, 
which was the twenty-ninth of September, he made her 
a written marriage-proposal. It was accepted, although 
at first her father, who did not like the idea of his eldest 
daughter's being obliged to wear "the green stockings/' 
angrily refused his consent. He was soon w r on over. 

Tolstoi, with honorable intent, as soon as he was 
accepted, gave his betrothed all his diaries to read, and 
she was so shocked at his intimate confession of youthful 
irregularities, tempered though they were by frequent 
prayers and expressions of sincere self-reproach, that she 
almost felt it her duty to break the engagement. Her 
love for him, however, caused her to put it into the back- 
ground of her mind and try to forget that he was not that 
ideal of virtue which he had seemed to her, a girl of 
eighteen. This whole episode forms a striking series 
of chapters in the fourth part of "Anna Karenina," 
where it is chronicled with scarcely more than a change 
of name; also with variation in "The Kreutzer Sonata." 

Kitty Shcherbatskaya, uncertain of her own mind and 
more in love with Count Vronsky than with Konstantin 
Levin, had broken down in health and had been taken 
abroad, where in new scenes she had recovered her 



i 9 4 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

serenity. On her return Levin appeared to her in a 
different light and they came to an understanding by 
means of the significant initials. Levin writes with 
chalk on the table: k.v. tn.o.; e.i.m.b.z.Le.n.n.i.L, and he has 
no idea that Kitty will be able to interpret them; but he 
looks at her with an expression which tells her that his 
very life depends on her understanding of the words for 
which the initials stand. She looks at him gravely, then 
tries to read, occasionally glancing up as if to ask, "Is it 
what I think?" 

"I understand," she says at last with a blush. And 
she lets him know that nekogdd, never, for which the n 
stands, never meant never, but was only a temporary 
"never" for the time when she refused him! So she 
takes the chalk and writes: T.y.n.m.i.o. And he also 
understands! It means: "Then I could not answer 
otherwise." The matronly Dolly looks in upon them 
and sees Kitty with the chalk in her hand with a timid 
and happy smile, looking up at Levin and his radiant 
face as he bends over the table, with flashing eyes, 
looking now at the table, now at her. Then she writes 
again: ch.v.ni.z.i.p.ch.b., signifying that they would for- 
get and forgive the past. He writes in the same way 
that he has nothing to forgive or forget, that he has never 
ceased to love her. She whispers, "I know it." So 
they carry on the conversation, each understanding the 
other, and though some of the longer sentences foil him, 
yet he can read in her eyes all that she means. And 
when he asks the fateful question in three initials, she 
answers in one word: da, yes! 

Then begins for Levin, as undoubtedly for the impul- 
sive Tolstoi, a brief season of unspeakable happiness. 
He cannot sleep, he has to confide in every one, he finds 
people who before had bored him are the most delightful 
in the world, and although he has to hurt Kitty's feelings 
by telling her that he is not so pure as she thinks him 



MARRIAGE 195 

and that he is a skeptic, still when he is asked when he 
wants the wedding, replies, " To-morrow !" 

Tolstoi was married within six days after his proposal. 
Like Levin, in "Anna Kar£nina," he had to go to con- 
fession — a formality in which he had no belief; but it was 
indispensable and he took it like a medicine. The 
wedding was celebrated on the fifth of October in the 
Court church of the Kremlin. Tolstoi's servant had 
packed up all his linen and sent it off; in consequence 
he was an hour late at the ceremony. "In the church 
was all Moscow — relatives and acquaintances, " it says 
in "Anna Karenina. " After giving a lively and dra- 
matic description of the wedding ceremonies, with 
snatches of gossipy and desultory conversation, the 
chapter ends with these words: "After the wedding, 
that same night the young couple went to the country. " 

This was what Tolstoi and the young countess did. 
They set forth for Yasnaya Polyana in a kind of traveling- 
carriage called a dormeuse. 

A fortnight later he wrote Fyet that he was married 
and happy — "a new, an entirely new man." 

The winter was spent partly on the estate and partly 
in Moscow. In January "The Cossacks" was published 
in the Russky Vyestnik, and a little later Tolstoi wrote 
to Fyet, with whom he had now resumed the old friendly 
relations, that he was living in a world so remote from 
literature and its critics that his first feeling on hearing 
about that story and "Polikushka" was one of astonish- 
ment. Who can have written those stories ? he asks, and 
what is the use of talking about them ? Anything can be 
put on paper, and editors print anything and pay for it. 

But he confesses that after this first impression one 
begins to wake up to the fact that it is pleasant to rum- 
mage about in that old heap of rubbish labeled Art and 
pleasant to smell the musty smell once more. The desire 
to write comes back; he is at work writing the story* of a 

*This was "Kholstomyer," which in some of the Tolstoi bibliographies 



196 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

piebald gelding, which he expects to publish in the follow- 
ing autumn. "How can one write now?" he asks. He 
was up to his ears in farming — he liked to call it ufanizing 
by an extension of his brother Nikolai's happy coinage. 
"We have no prikashchik; we have no helpers for the field- 
work and the building operations, but Sonya single-handed 
is attending to the office and the money. I look after 
the bees, the sheep, the new orchard, and the distillery. 
We make some progress, though slow, and of course it 
does not come up to our ideals." 

The letter ended with a reference to the Polish insur- 
rection of 1863, which was so cruelly suppressed by 
Russia, and implies the possibility that he and the other 
old soldiers would have to take their swords down from 
their rusty hooks. Toward the end of May Tolstoi con- 
fided in Fyet that there were expectations at Yasnaya 
Polyana, and the letter contained an invitation, prompted 
by the countess, for him to visit them. 

This Fyet did, and he tells in his "Recollections" how he 
found Tolstoi' eagerly engaged in seining for carp in one 
of the ponds. The countess in a white dress came 
running down an avenue of white birches with a huge 
bundle of keys hanging at her waist, and in spite of "her 
extremely interesting condition" jumped over the fence 
that separated the avenue from the pond. Tolstoi bade 
his wife send to the barn for a sack and the countess, de- 
taching a key from her belt, despatched a boy to get it. 
"There," remarked Tolstoi, "you see an example of our 
method. We keep the keys ourselves and all the chores 
are done by the boys." He was getting along without 
clerks and overseers, which he declared were only a 
hindrance in managing an estate, and he found the 
experiment quite satisfactory. 

Fyet gives us a glimpse of the dear old Aunt Tatyana 

is translated "The Linen-measurer." Kholstdors means " linen," and myer 
"a measure," but the name would seem to indicate "the pacer;" it also 
contains a pun, kholoshchenoikon being "a gelding." For some reason 
"Kholstomyer" was not published for twenty years — not until 1888. 



MARRIAGE 197 

looking with pride and hope on the happy pair and 
exclaiming, " You see, with mon cher Leon things could 
not be otherwise, of course." Of Tolstoi he says that 
having passed his whole life in an eager search for new 
things, he had now evidently entered upon a world of 
novel experiences in the splendid future of which he 
believed with all the enthusiasm of a young artist. 



II 



"war and peace" 



On the tenth of July, 1863, Tolstoi's eldest child was 
born. He was named after his uncle Sergyei', and has lived 
to devote his talents successfully to music. During this 
year Tolstoi wrote a farcical comedy, entitled "The 
Nihilist," which was privately performed in his own home 
with great success; and also a comedy, "The Infected 
Family,' ' which he hoped to bring out on the Moscow 
stage; but for some reason it was never even published. 
It will be included in the definitive edition of his works. 

The young countess not only occupied herself with the 
management of domestic affairs but also acted practically 
as his private secretary. She was systematic, he was 
most careless; his handwriting was exceedingly blind and 
he had a habit of interlining his afterthoughts; but the 
countess, who had shown so much acumen in deciphering 
his abbreviations, was no less clever in making out what 
her brother calls his marvelously illegible handwriting, 
his hastily scratched scrawls and fantastic hieroglyphics, 
his incompleted words and phrases. He tells us that 
the countess, during the eight years while he was writing 
his panoramic novel " War and Peace," copied it "no less 
than seven times. " As he considerably exaggerates the 
length of the "War and Peace" period it may be doubted 
if that word seven is to be taken literally, especially as he 
adds that during that time four children were born, that 
she not only nursed them herself but made all their clothes. 
Moreover, the oldest child was at one time ill with small- 
pox and dysentery, and Tolstoi' himself was more than 
once in bad health. 

198 



"WAR AND PEACE" 199 

Even while Tolstoi was at the University of Kaz£n his 
interest had been kindled by the historical events at the 
beginning of the century; and he was now planning to 
write a romance, the characters of which should be partici- 
pants in the great Dekabrist or December Conspiracy of 
1825, when some of the more advanced of the Russian 
people took advantage of the accession of Nicholas I. to 
demand a constitution. The conspiracy was brutally 
suppressed, the poet Ruilayef and others were executed 
and many were exiled. Among those who were con- 
demned to hard labor in the mines of Eastern Siberia, part 
of the time in irons, was a cousin of Tolstoi's mother. 
This was the Prince Volkonsky whose wife voluntarily 
shared in his exile and is represented by Nekrasof in his 
long and dramatic poem, "Russian Women/' as torn by 
her love for her son whom she must leave behind in a 
sister's care and for her husband whom it would be a 
shame to desert — the hero whom she had loved in prison 
as she loved Christ. 

The thirty years' exile was ended and the lofty-hearted 
survivors, broken by their sufferings and privations, had 
returned after the death of Nicholas. The arrival of 
one of these former exiles with his family, at a time when 
all Russia was again boiling with political enthusiasms, 
made a promising starting-point for a romance; but it 
may be easily seen that the menace of the censorship 
would take away all pleasure in writing it, the constraint 
would be too great. Still greater difficulties would be 
met from the same cause in treating of the actual conspir- 
acy; and it is not strange that after several abortive at- 
tempts at long intervals Tolstoi' went back still further 
and began his prose epic, the first book of which he 
thought to call "The Year 1805." In order to sow the 
field that he had chosen, he was working hard at the 
"preliminary work of plowing deep. " He wrote to Fy£t 
that it was terribly difficult to consider and reconsider all 
that might happen to all the characters that he was pro- 



2oo THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

posing to introduce into the very big work that he had in 
mind and to weigh millions of possible combinations in 
order to select a millionth part from among them. 

In the autumn of 1864, after a second visit to Samara, 
whose locality attracted him more and more, he informed 
Fyet that he had written a good deal of his new novel but 
complained that he could accomplish only a thousandth 
part of what he wanted to do. " Nevertheless, " he added, 
"the consciousness of the ability is what brings happi- 
ness to men like us." 

There were still living in Russia, and among his own 
relatives, people whose recollections went back to the 
burning of Moscow; in the family archives there were 
memoirs and letters which cast a light on those days; 
some of Tolstoi's friends were of assistance to him in 
getting written information from those that knew. There 
were government archives and documents and books in 
the libraries and museums. He himself collected a 
great mass of material. 

His work on the novel was interrupted in the late 
autumn by a serious accident which befell him one wet 
day as he was out riding on his English thoroughbred 
Mashka, accompanied by his two dogs, Liubka and Krui- 
lat. Several miles from home they started up a hare, and 
in an instant there was a wild pursuit. The ground was 
slippery and the horse stumbled and threw her rider at 
the entrance of a narrow ravine. Tolstoi's arm was 
broken and dislocated. He fainted from the pain, but on 
recovering consciousness succeeded in making his way on 
foot to the highway, half a kilometer distant. He man- 
aged to attract the attention of some peasants, who 
carried him to the izba of an old baba named Akulina. 
She with the aid of her son tried to set the arm, but 
without success. Word was brought to the countess. 
She sent to Tula for a doctor, who arrived late at night 
and after administering chloroform was able, with the 



"WAR AND PEACE" 201 

aid of two farm-hands, to set the broken bones and pull 
the arm into place. 

He was forbidden to use the arm for six weeks. At the 
end of that time, being distrustful of the Tula physician's 
skill, he took his gun and fired it off. It hurt him so 
severely that he decided to go to Moscow and consult 
specialists. There two competent surgeons rectified the 
blundering country surgery and he ultimately recovered 
the full use of his arm. 

This spring his eldest daughter, Tatyana, was born. 
The mother did not follow the usual Russian custom of 
employing a wet-nurse for her infants but nursed them 
all, with the exception of her second daughter. 

While he was in Moscow he sold Katkof, for the 
Russky Vyestnik, the serial rights to the first instal- 
ments of "War and Peace," at the rate of five hundred 
rubles a printed sheet. The price of fiction had increased 
tenfold since his Caucasus days. 

In February, 1865, he wrote Fyet that his novel would 
make its appearance very shortly and begged him to give 
him his honest opinion of it. He wanted Turgenief's 
also, though he disliked him more and more. Tolstoi's 
collected works had been recently published in four 
volumes, containing nearly a score of short stories besides 
a selection from his educational articles. He told Fyet 
that all he had printed up to that time he considered 
only experimental. Still he w^as not satisfied with the 
preliminary chapters of his new work; he said it was 
wxak — as any introduction has to be. "But what will 
follow will be immense!" He adds in a jocular tone: — 

"I am glad you like my w r ife; though I love her less 
than my novel, still, you know, she is my wife. " 

The published reminiscences of Fyet and Tolstoi's 
brother-in-law Stepan Andreyevitch Behrs, and Tolstoi's 
letters, are the chief authority for the period devoted to 
"War and Peace." After October, 1865, he ceased to 
keep a diary. 



202 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Natasha, who comes dancing into that story with a 
charm not exceeded by any heroine in all fiction, is evi- 
dently a sort of compound photograph of the countess 
and her younger sister Tatyana or Tanya, who always 
spent her summers with them. Tolstoi's brother Sergye'i, 
though twenty-two years older, was in love with her and 
she would have gladly married him. Her parents also 
were desirous of seeing them married, although they all 
knew that he was living with a gypsy woman and had 
a family of children by her. This affair caused much 
unhappiness, but Sergyei' felt that it was his duty to legiti- 
mize his children. He made their mother his legal wife 
two years later (1867). Tatyana Behrs soon afterward 
married a man named Kuzminsky. 

With due variations Tolstoi made use of this incident 
in depicting the twofold love-affairs of Natasha with 
Kuragin and Prince Andrei, and her ultimate happiness 
with Pierre. 

Literary work was more and more drawing Tolstoi 
from his interest in farming. He wrote Fyet that he was 
making slow progress with his writing but was content. 
Every afternoon he went out after woodcock. "My 
farming, " he says, "goes on well — that is to say, it does 
not trouble me much and that is all I ask of it." 

Later he complained that farming was in bad shape — 
farmers being like capitalists whose shares have depreci- 
ated and are unsalable in the market. Yet personally all 
he asked for was that it should not take too much of his 
attention so as to cheat him of his peace of mind. But the 
threat of famine in his neighborhood worried him more 
and more and it did not seem to him fair that his own 
table should be groaning with delicacies — red radishes, 
golden butter, sweet white bread, on a clean table-cloth, 
green trees in the garden, and charming company of 
young ladies in fluffy muslin frocks, while all around the 
evil famine-devil was at work covering the fields with 
weeds, opening cracks in the parched ground, chafing the 



"WAR AND PEACE' ' 203 

calloused heels of the muzhiks and cracking the hoofs of 
the live stock. He advises Fy£t to follow his example and 
make literature and not the land his chief interest. 

This realization of the importance of authorship lasted 
some time. For instance in November, 1866, he wrote 
Fy£t asking him what he was doing: "Not in the 
zemstvo or in farming, for all that sort of thing constitutes 
the unfree acts of man and what you and I do in that line 
is as elemental and unfree as the digging of ants in their 
anthills and therefore neither good nor bad; but what are 
you doing in your mental processes with the Fyetly main- 
spring of your being which alone has been, is, and will be 
forever ? Is that mainspring still alive ? Is it trying to 
manifest itself, and how is it expressing itself or has it 
forgotten to express itself? That is the main thing. " 

It will always be "the main thing," but how different 
in its manifestation! 

He had inherited from his brother Nikolai the estate 
of Nikdlskoye, and having had the house there repaired he 
moved to it with his family for the summer, where he 
lived quietly, writing "War and Peace" and seeing 
something of his neighbors Fy6t and Dyakof. He took 
part in a great hunt organized by another neighboring 
pomyeshchik named Kireyevsky. The huntsmen wore pic- 
turesque costumes and the dinner was served in the forest. 
It was an interesting gathering of the old aristocracy. 

In the autumn of 1865 Tolstoi determined to visit the 
battle-field of Borodind, and on his way stayed at the 
Behrs' home. He invited his young brother-in-law, then 
about eleven years old, to go with him. They drove in 
Dr. Behrs's post-carriage, and when the time for luncheon 
came discovered that the food had been left behind. 
Tolstoi remarked to Stepan Andr^yevitch that he was 
sorry, not because the luncheon was left behind, but 
because Dr. Behrs would be angry with his servant. 

They made the journey in one day and lodged in the 
monastery that had been erected in memory of the hun- 



204 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

dred thousand killed on the battle-field. For two days 
Tolstoi wandered over the ground where the great battle 
took place. He made minute investigations and drew a 
plan of the field, which was published as a frontispiece in 
one of the volumes of his novel. He pointed out to his 
young companion the places occupied by Napoleon and 
Kutiizof and related several stories of the battle. He 
hunted up various elderly persons who were supposed to 
remember something about the great event. Unfortu- 
nately the veteran who had been rewarded by having 
charge of the monument that commemorated the battle 
had recently died and the quest for fresh material in the 
way of reminiscences was not very successful. 

Tolstoi took advantage of his stay in Moscow to study 
into the documents at the Rumyantsof Museum, par- 
ticularly those referring to the reform movements and 
Masonic lodges that were so vigorously suppressed after 
the war. 



Ill 

CHARACTERISTICS 

In January, 1866, Tolstoi hired a six-room apartment 
in Moscow for six weeks while the second part of 
"War and Peace" was printing for the Russky Vyestnik. 
He attended the Moscow drawing school and took up 
modeling in clay. He went so far as to make a bust of 
his wife. There is nothing to indicate whether he ever 
practiced this branch of art; but his third son and name- 
sake, born three years later, became not only a literary 
man, but also a sculptor, with an especial talent for por- 
traiture. After his return to Yasnaya Polyana his 
second son, Ilya, was born and an English nurse was 
employed. 

During the summer that followed a dramatic event oc- 
curred. A regiment of infantry happened to be stationed 
near Yasnaya Polyana. Several of the officers visited the 
Tolstois. One day Ensign Stasulyevitch — brother of Mik- 
hail, the founder of the Vyestnik Yevropui — came to call, 
with a young sub-lieutenant named Grisha Kolokoltsof, 
whom the countess had known in Moscow. They 
wanted to enlist Tolstoi's interest in a private soldier 
named Shibunin, employed as clerk for the Polish 
captain of one of the companies. Shibunin was dull and 
when he received any money spent it in drinking. The 
captain disliked him and persecuted him by finding fault 
with his reports and making him rewrite them. Shi- 
bunin, on one such occasion, being angry when told to 
recopy a document, struck the captain. According to 
the military law such a misdemeanor was punishable by 
death. 

205 



206 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

The officers felt that there was some extenuation for 
Shibunin and they urged Tolstoi to defend the man. 
Tolstoi, who, ever since he had witnessed the execution 
in Paris, had felt that capital punishment was a crime, 
was glad to do so. He wrote out an eloquent speech 
urging that Shibunin was not responsible for his action, 
his mind having become weakened by intemperance and 
the stupefying drudgery of his occupation, but at the 
same time was intelligent enough to hate the captain 
because he was a Pole and to feel that he was treating 
him unfairly. 

Tolstoi spoke easily and with assurance on this occa- 
sion, urging that there was legal palliation for the offense. 
The judges listened, says Tolstoi, with hardly con- 
cealed ennui to all the stupidities which he uttered, 
looked at a few papers and a book, and then consulted in 
private. When the verdict of the court martial was 
announced it was learned that Ensign Stasulyevitch was 
in favor of acquittal; the colonel, who was a martinet, 
insisted that the culprit should be executed according to 
law ; while Kolokoltsof , on whom the decision rested, felt 
that it was his duty to support the colonel, Yiinosha, and 
therefore voted against granting mercy. 

Tolstoi immediately wrote his Aunt Aleksandra 
begging her to appeal to the Emperor to pardon the man. 
Unfortunately he neglected to designate the regiment to 
which the parties belonged, and when she went to the 
Minister of War, Milyutin said that it was impossible to 
bring the matter before the sovereign until he had all the 
facts. Meantime the colonel, eager to uphold military 
discipline, hastened the execution, which took place on 
the twenty-first of August. 

The peasantry of the neighborhood sympathized with 
the poor fellow and brought him food and clothing to the 
extent of their means, and when he was shot they thronged 
around the post to which he was tied — the women weep- 
ing, and many of them fainting. A priest was engaged 



CHARACTERISTICS 207 

to perform masses at his grave for a whole day. Such 
quantities of offerings in the form of copper money, linen, 
and candles were brought that the priest would have been 
enabled to keep up the service indefinitely; but the local 
police interfered, forbidding any more religious services, 
and causing the grave to be leveled lest it should become 
an object of pilgrimage. 

Nearly all Tolstoi's experiences with governmental 
red-tape and the arbitrary measures of officials were 
cumulative factors in his development toward scientific 
anarchy, strengthening his belief that the administration 
of law was evil. But afterward he bitterly regretted 
that he had not at the time formulated his principle of 
love to all men, so that he might have conducted the 
defense from the right standpoint. 

This may serve as a sample of the way Tolstoi's time 
was broken in upon during the summer. He had many 
visitors, and sometimes in his discussions with them he 
would express himself in a way to offend. He was quick- 
tempered, but his servants knew how to get along with 
him. One of them, who was in his employ for more than 
twenty years, felt a son's affection for him. "When he 
was angry with me about anything, I used to leave the 
room at once, for I understood him, and when he sum- 
moned me again it was as if nothing unpleasant had 
happened. . . . When he wanted to go hunting he would 
order the trap. His man, Aleksei, would bring him his 
hunting-boots and the count would shout at him, 'Why 
didn't you dry them? You are not worth your salt!' 
But Aleksei, who understood him, would take the boots 
away and bring them back almost immediately and the 
count would say, 'There! They're all right,' and 
recover his serenity." 

He was enthusiastic in his love of nature, particularly 
of the Russian landscape. His brother-in-law quotes him 
as exclaiming: "What wealth God has! He gives each 
day something to distinguish it from every other." 



208 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Nothing except illness, from which he too often suffered, 
prevented him from taking his daily walk. He could en- 
dure loss of appetite, but a day without a smart outing in 
the open air was a trial to him. Often when he came upon 
peasants plowing or mowing, he liked to stop and lend a 
hand, letting the man whose scythe or plow he took rest 
the while. "On such occasions," says Behrs, "he more 
than once asked me how it came to pass that in spite of 
well-developed muscles they could not mow for six days 
running, while a common muzhik, who slept on the damp 
ground and lived on black bread, could easily do it. 
Just try it and see!" he would say. He also enjoyed 
horseback riding and gymnastics. He could exercise all 
day without suffering fatigue. He kept dumb-bells in 
his library and often exercised with other apparatus. 

He was so strong that he could lift five kilograms with 
one hand. In the winter he would help clear the pond 
for skating; in summer he mowed the lawn and raked the 
garden beds; he liked to play leap-frog or skittles with 
the boys, or to race with them. He grew to dislike 
luxury more and more. He was not particular about 
his food, yet sometimes when he felt that he ought to 
refrain from a second portion of some favorite dish he 
would humorously console himself by exclaiming, " Wait 
till I am grown up and then I will have two helpings to 
that dish." Or if he wanted a second cigar, he would 
express himself in the same whimsical way. In later 
life he conscientiously gave up the use of tobacco. He 
preferred to sleep on a leather-covered divan rather than 
on a soft bed or spring mattress. All visitors to Yasnaya 
Poly ana remarked upon the Spartan simplicity of the 
dwelling, particularly his own quarters. 

His dress in the country at that time, and afterward at 
all times, was simplicity itself. He never wore starched 
shirts. "His costume," says his brother-in-law, "con- 
sisted of a gray flannel blouse, which in summer he ex- 
changed for one of linen of a very original cut, as we judge 



CHARACTERISTICS 209 

from the fact that there was in the district only one old 
woman who could make it according to his prescription. 
He sat in this blouse to Kramsko'i and Ryepin, who painted 
his portrait. His over-dress was composed of a kaftan 
and a polu-shuba, or short coat of the simplest ma- 
terials, and like the blouse eccentric in cut, being made 
evidently not for show but to withstand bad weather." 

He was subject to varying moods; often, especially 
when with young people, being hilarious and comical. 
Behrs tells how on one occasion, when the countess was 
getting ready to go to Tula to make some purchases and 
consulted him as to what dresses she should buy for the 
children and for herself, he exclaimed, "Why! there is a 
business cut out for four hundred linen drapers. " If ever 
an excursion were proposed he would say with mock solem- 
nity, " We must first hear what our prime-minister has to 
say about it;" by that epithet he referred to his wife. 
Sometimes when he was playing duets with his sister, the 
Countess Marya, he would find it difficult to keep up with 
her. If he got into difficulties he would say or do some- 
thing to make her laugh, and so make up for lost time. 
Or again he would solemnly stop and take off his boot 
and then go on, exclaiming, "Now it will go all right." In 
running races with the boys, if he found that he was 
outstripped he would try to make them laugh and so take 
advantage of them in that way. 

When he wanted to create a diversion he would some- 
times suddenly spring up from his place and indulge in a 
"Numidian cavalry charge," which consisted in galloping 
wildly around the room with one hand high in the air as 
if it held a sword and the other grasping an imaginary 
bridle, followed by all the young people. 

He was very fond of children and easily won their 
confidence and affection. It was a great pleasure to him 
to talk with them and he seemed to have a peculiar 
ability in reading their minds. Sometimes his children 
would come running up to him and tell him that they had 



210 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

a great secret, and he would surprise them by whispering 
in their ears what it was. "How did he find it out?" 
they would cry in astonishment. 

He had his own particular theories regarding the educa- 
tion of children, but for various reasons he was not able 
to apply them to the training of his own. He succeeded 
in keeping toys and playthings from the nursery, and they 
were never on any pretext subjected to severe punish- 
ments. If they were detected in telling a lie, no actual 
infliction of pain or humiliation was allowed, but they were 
left severely alone until they felt sorrow or regret. No 
mere promise not to repeat the offense or prayer for 
pardon was regarded. 

The children were never punished for neglecting their 
lessons or reciting badly, but the theory that no compulsion 
should be exercised on a pupil, which was practiced in the 
Yasnaya Polyana School, was found inconvenient and im- 
possible in his own household. This was more and more 
the case as the older sons had to prepare for entering on a 
University career, of which the count did not feel justified 
in depriving them. 

The countess taught them their Russian, Tolstoi 
trained them in arithmetic, and they had various govern- 
esses and bonnes for the other languages. They were 
particularly fortunate in their first English governess; 
she lived with them for more than six years and after she 
was married kept up friendly relations with the family. 
As the children grew older Russian and foreign tutors 
taught such subjects as were required. A music master 
came over every week from Tula and the count insisted 
on their taking up serious pieces as speedily as possible. 
They were inspired to study nature in all its aspects, to 
watch the actions of insects, to love animals, and to 
sympathize with all creatures, especially their fellow- 
men of humbler birth. When they needed the assistance 
of a servant, they were expected to ask it as a favor and 
not to demand it as a right. 



CHARACTERISTICS 2 1 1 

Above all Tolstoi tried to impress on his children a 
consciousness of their powerlessness and their dependence, 
and yet he kept them from any sense of fear or dread. 

When he taught the children himself he was not 
ashamed at times to acknowledge that questions came up 
which he could not answer. "Well," he would say, "you 
see I don't quite understand that myself." 

His brother-in-law says that when he was in his seven- 
teenth or eighteenth year he and one of his school friends 
became sorely troubled as to the state of their souls and 
thought of becoming monks. But whenever he brought 
his spiritual troubles to Tolstoi, the latter avoided ex- 
pressing any doubts or opinions, but left it to the boy to 
work out his own salvation. One time, however, as they 
were riding by the village graveyard, they saw two horses 
grazing in it. Stepan Andreyevitch was remarking on 
the difficulty of a man living in peace as long as he had 
not solved the question of a future life. 

"You see those two horses grazing," Tolstoi replied. 
" Are they not laying up for a future life ?" 

"But I am speaking of our spiritual, not our earthly life," 
protested young Behrs. 

"Well, regarding that, I neither know nor can know 
anything," said Tolstoi*. 

Tolstoi set the example of incessant occupation. The 
burden of the countess's letters was, "We are all very 
busy." His most productive time was in winter. In 
spring and summer he frequently complained that he was 
doing nothing, that it was a dull, dead time with him — 
impossible for him to think or write; but after these 
periods of mental inactivity passed he would sometimes 
spend a whole day WTiting. His brother-in-law says that 
in the days when he visited Yasnaya the program consisted 
of a walk or ride before breakfast. The whole family 
assembled around the breakfast table, and there was 
always gay and lively conversation. Then the count 
would suddenly say, "It is time for me to w r ork now;" and 



212 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

taking with him a glass of strong tea he would return to 
his library, where no one, not even his wife, ventured to 
interrupt him. 

As a relaxation from his exacting labors, he liked to 
read some book quite alien to the topic he was studying. 
He liked Anthony Trollope and was favorably impressed 
by the novels of Mrs. Henry Wood and Miss Braddon. 
He read Goethe and Kant; he was deeply impressed by 
"Les Miserables," and the comedies of Moliere were 
highly amusing to him. But he consistently maintained 
his disapproval of the writings of George Sand and was 
particularly severe on "Consuelo." He rarely read 
newspapers and was very scornful of journalists and 
critics. 

Though theoretically he approved of neatness, he was 
hardly an example of that virtue. When he undressed 
he let his things drop wherever he happened to be, and his 
man had to follow his tracks and pick them up. He 
disliked packing and when he had that to do for himself 
his portmanteau was a fearful jumble of disorder. 

He disliked to wake any one up, and if his attendant 
happened to fall asleep and neglected to serve the late 
supper that he ate before retiring, he would go on tip-toe 
to the pantry and help himself. He used to remark 
jestingly, "When one is asleep, at least one is not sinning." 

He disliked exceedingly to go away from home, and 
Behrs says he would grumble terribly if he had to run up 
to Moscow to engage a tutor or transact other business. 
On his return he always had amusing stories of his 
experiences. He especially detested traveling by rail, and 
when the Moscow-Kursk line was completed as far as 
Tula, though it essentially reduced the difficulty of travel 
yet Tolstoi rarely took advantage of it. He complained 
of the disagreeable sensations he experienced in railway 
carriages. He usually traveled third-class and liked to 
engage chance fellow-passengers in conversation, espe- 
cially if they were muzhiks. He had no patience with the 



CHARACTERISTICS 213 

obsequiousness of conductors, and the suspicious aloof ness 
of travelers, especially of the upper classes, was intoler- 
able to him. Judging from the small use made of rail- 
ways and telegraphs by the common people, he came to 
the conclusion that they brought no advantage to the 
people at large. 

He was frequently troubled with ill health, probably 
caused in part by over-indulgence and irregularity in 
eating when he was a young man. This also doubtless 
had a bad effect on his teeth. But he had little confidence 
in medicine. In his books are many satirical and sar- 
castic references to doctors, who, he claimed, were quite 
ignorant of the causes and of the proper treatment of mala- 
dies. He held with his favorite Rousseau that the practice 
of medicine should not be confined to any one profession. 
He himself preferred the so-called popular remedies 
which have been found useful by generations of the com- 
mon people. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1867 he 
was induced to consult with the most famous specialist 
of Moscow, Professor Zakharin, and on his return, by 
his advice, began what he called "a rigid cure" for his 
indigestion. 

At this time he was very busy correcting the proofs of 
"War and Peace," which, together with sections of the 
manuscript, he had to send off each day under threat of 
delayed publication and a fine. Turgenief's novel, 
"Smoke" ("Duim"), had recently appeared and Tolstoi 
read it and entirely disapproved of it. He felt that the 
power of poetry lay in love and the direction of that power 
depended on character. "Without the power of love 
there is no poetry," he said, "but the power falsely 
directed — the result of the poet's having a disagreeable, 
weak character — creates dislike. In ' Smoke' there is 
hardly any love of anything and very little poetry. The 
only love is in light, playful adultery, and consequently 
the poetry of that novel is repulsive." 



214 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

When Turgenief had finished reading the fourth 
volume of "War and Peace/' he wrote Fyet: — 

" There are unendurable things in it and there are 
wonderful things in it, and the wonderful things — they 
predominate — are so magnificently good that no one has 
ever written better and it is doubtful if anything as good 
has ever been written before." 



IV 

HISTORICAL FICTION 

Tolstoi took his family to Moscow in the late autumn 
of 1867 and was there most of the winter. Fyet appeared 
and was planning for an Authors' Reading for the benefit 
of the peasantry of Mtsensk, where there was great 
suffering from famine. Fyet urged him to read some- 
thing but he flatly refused, ironically declaring that Fyet 
had invented the famine: he never had read in public 
and never would read in public. Still, when Fyet urged 
that something of his would insure the success of the 
evening, he lent him the proofs of the chapter* of " War 
and Peace" which describes the retreat of the Russian 
army from Smolensk during a time of drought. It was 
read with immense effect by Prince Kugushef, a well- 
known poet and dramatist. 

Three volumes of the novel were published in 1868; 
the sixth and last, containing the Epilogue, was not 
brought out until late in the autumn of 1869. Eugene 
Schuyler, who was at that time the American consul at 
Moscow, made Tolstoi a visit and afterwards wrote an 
account of it, chronicling the author's remarks regarding 
"War and Peace," which he said w r as not a novel, still 
less a historical chronicle. "It is not presumption on 
my part/' said Tolstoi, "if I keep clear of customary 
forms. The history of Russian literature from Pushkin 
down presents many similar examples. From the ' Dead 
Souls' of Gogol to the 'Dead House' of Dostoyevsky, 
there is not a single artistic prose work of more than 

♦Vol. IV., Part X., Chapter V 
2IS 



216 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

average merit which keeps entirely to the usual form of 
a novel or a poem. 

"Some of my readers have said that the character of 
the times is not sufficiently shown. I know what they 
mean — the horrors of serfdom, the walling up of wives, 
the flogging of grown-up sons, the Saltuitchikha, as she 
is commonly called (that Madame Saltuikova who in the 
time of Katharine II. in the course of eleven or twelve 
years had over a hundred of her serfs whipped to death, 
chiefly women and girls for not washing her linen prop- 
erly), and things like that. 

"The fact is that I did not find all this a true expression 
of the character of the times. After studying no end of 
letters, journals, and traditions, I did not find horrors 
worse than in our own times or any other. In those times 
people also loved, hated, sought the truth, tried to do 
good and were carried away by their passions. There 
was also then in the highest class a complicated, thought- 
ful moral life, perhaps even more refined than now\ 
Our traditions of that epoch are drawn from the excep- 
tions. The character of that time comes from the greater 
separation of the upper class from the rest, the ruling 
philosophy, the peculiarities of education, and especially 
the habit of talking French; and that character I tried as 
far as I could to portray." 

He went on to explain why he introduced characters 
under the names of well-known families slightly changed; 
Bolkonsky for Volkonsky, Drubetskoi' for Trubetskoi, 
Akhrosimova for Ofromosimova and Denisof for Denisof- 
Davuidof. Some, like Rostof , were actual inventions ; but 
it seems to him false art to cause a historical personage 
like Napoleon or Count Rostopchin to talk with a Prince 
Pronsky or Strelsky, while the slightly altered names had 
a sound natural and customary in Russian aristocratic 
circles. 

He declared that he had no desire to lead people to 
think that he wanted to represent particular persons : the 



HISTORICAL FICTION 2 1 7 

sort of literature that consisted in the description of per- 
sons really existing or known to have existed had nothing 
in common with his purpose. He claimed that when he, 
without thinking, as he did in two instances, gave names 
resembling characteristic and delightful personages of 
the period depicted, there was nothing resembling the 
truth in their actions; and all the other characters were 
purely imaginary, having no prototypes either in tra- 
dition or in actual life. 

Schuyler says that one incident in the latter part of the 
story, the indecision of the Countess Helen as to her 
choice of a new husband, was founded on an occurrence 
at Petersburg while the story was in progress. "A 
certain Madame A., although she was not as yet divorced 
from her husband, was eagerly courted by two suitors, 
the old chancellor, Prince Gortchakof, and the Duke of 
Leuchtenburg, the Emperor's nephew. The Emperor 
forbade both the rivals to marry, one on account of the 
relationship, the other on account of his age and family. 
The issue of the story was different. The lady lived for 
a while with Prince Gortchakof as his niece, and in that 
capacity presided at his diplomatic dinners; subsequently 
she ran away with the duke, and years after, in 1879, 
married him morganatically, with the title of Countess 
Beauharnais." 

Tolstoi commented on the charge that his battle 
descriptions were imitated from the celebrated account 
of the battle of Waterloo in Stendhal's "Chartreuse de 
Parme." He said that the historian and the artist, in 
describing a historical epoch, have totally different aims 
and treat of different subjects: — 

" A historian," he said, " would not be right if he tried 
to present a historical personage in all his entirety, in 
all his complicated relations to life. Neither would 
an artist do his duty if he always gave him his historical 
signification. Kutuzof was not always riding on a white 
horse, wdth his field glass in his hand, pointing at the 



2i 8 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

enemy. Rostopchin was not always with a torch setting 
fire to his house at Voronovo (in fact he never did this at 
all) , and the Empress Maria Feddorovna did not always 
stand in an ermine cloak resting her hand on the 'Code 
of Laws.' But this is the way in which the popular 
imagination pictures them. The historian deals with 
heroes; the artist with men. The historian treats of the 
results of events; the artist of the facts connected with 
the events. 

" Battles are, of course, almost always described in a 
contradictory way by the two sides; but, besides this, there 
is in every description of a battle a certain amount of 
falsehood which is unavoidable on account of the 
necessity of describing in a few words the actions of 
thousands of people distributed over a space of several 
miles, all under the strongest moral excitement, under 
the influence of fear of disgrace or of death. 

11 Descriptions of battles generally say that such troops 
were sent to attack such a point and were afterwards 
ordered to retreat, etc., as if people supposed that the 
same discipline that on a parade ground moves tens of 
thousands of men by the will of one, could have had the 
same effect where it is a question of life or death. 
Every one who has been in a war knows how untrue this 
is, and yet on this supposition military reports are 
made out, and on them descriptions of battles are 
written. . . . 

" Go about among all the troops immediately after an 
engagement, or even on a second or third day, before the 
official reports are written, and ask all the soldiers and the 
higher and lower officers how things went : all these people 
will tell you what they really felt and saw, and you will re- 
ceive an impression which is grand, 'complicated, im- 
mensely varied and solemn, but by no means clear; you 
will learn from no one, still less from the commander-in- 
chief, exactly how the whole took place. But in two or 
three days official reports begin to come in, talkers begin 



HISTORICAL FICTION 219 

to describe what they never saw, finally the whole report 
is made up, and this creates a sort of public opinion in 
the army. 

11 It is so much easier to settle all one's doubts and 
questions by this false, but always clear and flattering 
account. If in a month or two you question a man who 
took part in the battle, you will no longer feel in his story 
that raw living material that was there before, for he 
will tell it according to the official report. 

"The details of the battle of Borodino were told to me 
by many shrewd men who took part in it and are still 
alive. They all told that same story, all according to the 
untrue accounts of Mikhailovsky-Danielefsky, Glinka, 
etc., and even related the same details in the same way, 
though they must have been miles off from one 
another. . . . 

" But besides the necessary falsehood in the description 
of events, I find a false way of understanding events. 
Often when studying the two chief historical productions 
on this epoch, Thiers and Mikhailovsky-Danielefsky, I 
am astonished how such books could be printed or read. 
Without speaking of the exposition of the same events 
in the same serious, important tone, with references to 
authorities, and yet diametrically opposed to one another, 
I have found in these histories descriptions of a sort that 
I did not know whether to laugh or to cry over them, 
when I remembered that these books are the sole memo- 
rials of the epoch and have millions of readers. I'll give 
a single instance from Thiers, who, in speaking of the 
forged Russian bank-notes brought by Napoleon, says, 
1 Using these means in an act of benevolence worthy of 
himself and of the French army, he distributed assistance 
to the sufferers by the conflagration. But provisions 
being too precious to be given for long to strangers, for 
the most part enemies, Napoleon preferred to furnish 
them with money, and had paper rubles distributed to 
them.' If Thiers had fully understood what he was say- 



220 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

ing, could he have written in such a way of such an 
immoral act?" 

A long discussion followed regarding the occupation of 
Moscow and the great fire. Tolstoi maintained vigor- 
ously that the conflagration was wholly due to accident, 
and he spoke with great contempt of Rostopchin. " Ros- 
topchin always denied that he had a hand in the burning 
of Moscow until he found out that, to excuse themselves, 
the French had attributed it to him, and that in his visit 
to France after the restoration, this was thought a glorious 
deed of patriotism. He at first accepted it modestly, 
and then boldly boasted of it. This legend has been kept 
alive, partly by the chauvinism of the French historians 
and partly by the influence of the Segurs (one of whom 
manned his daughter) and their numerous relatives and 
literary following. " 

Tolstoi insisted in his conversation with Schuyler that 
he had taken the greatest pains to be accurate and con- 
scientious in historical matters. "Wherever historical 
characters act and speak in my novel," he said, "I have 
imagined nothing and have conformed myself strictly to 
historical materials and the accounts of witnesses. " 

Nevertheless, military authorities pointed out mistakes, 
as for instance regarding the disposition of the forces on 
the battle-fields of Borodino. 

But Tolstoi argued that for the purposes of art or fiction 
it is legitimate to depart from historic sources, especially 
when from the very nature of things it is impossible to 
secure historic accuracy, the details of battles being a 
matter of guess-work and the men who think that they 
are directing the forces let loose are really not playing the 
game or controlling the game any more than the knights 
or bishops on the chess-board wittingly direct the move- 
ments of castles or pawns. 

"In notable historic movements," he says, "the so- 
called great men are the labels that name events and 



HISTORICAL FICTION 221 

periods; but, like the labels, they have the least to do 
with the events." 

Tolstoi's tendency to put the collective value of the 
common people high above that of private individuals, 
however gifted, is shown in his treatment of Napoleon, 
Murat, the Emperor of Austria, whose weaknesses are 
implacably held up to reprobation; everywhere the simple 
homely, vulgar life of the peasant is depicted as preferable 
to the highly artificial existence of society men and 
women. 

It is not surprising then to find that Prince Andrei, in 
whom we may perhaps see Tolstoi's brother Nikolai', 
and Count Pierre, with his vacillations and his frequent 
lapses into moral degradation, thus in certain ways stand- 
ing for his own personality, are contrasted with the char- 
acter of the muzhik Platon Karatayef, who is the ideal of 
the simplicity and the dignity of the typical krestyanin, 
the Christian peasant. 

"War and Peace" is a panoramic novel, and the succes- 
sion of magnificent pictures, filled with figures of almost 
colossal proportions — the grandiose battle-scenes, the 
transcriptions of great society functions, the idyllic occupa- 
tions of country life, farm-work and hunting — fills the 
mind with admiration at the grasp displayed. And it 
must be confessed that one may be somewhat wearied at 
the lectures of the exhibitor, striving by special pleading to 
make out a case contrary to the general opinion of man- 
kind as to the importance of great men. 

Sir Walter Scott wrote long introductions to many of 
his historical novels, reminding one of the gradual ap- 
proach to a bridge, but when he had once begun the cur- 
rent of his narration it went on uninterrupted. Not so 
with "War and Peace"; it is episodic, but this is largely 
due to the fact that so many personages — not less than a 
hundred clearly differentiated — are introduced and are 
important enough to divide the interest attaching to the 
six principal characters. This is inevitably the case 



222 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

where family groups are put into contrast and their 
various histories are minutely detailed. This requires an 
immense grasp and an intensity of purpose which prevent 
a scattering of attention on the part of the reader. That 
Tolstoi succeeded in this tremendously difficult task is 
the highest tribute to his genius. Although its publica- 
tion stretched out over several years — the Epilogue not 
appearing until late in 1869 — it kept the enthusiasm of 
the Russian people at the highest pitch and has ever 
since been recognized as one of the masterpieces of uni- 
versal literature. Flaubert, when he read it in French, 
exclaimed: "What a painter and what a psychologist! 
The first two volumes are sublime, but he falls off horribly 
in the third. . . . Sometimes there seem to be things 
like Shakespeare. " 

In September of that year Tolstoi was drinking deep 
draughts of Schopenhauer, which gave him enjoyment 
such as he had never before experienced. He was con- 
fident that the German pessimist was the greatest genius 
among men; as was usually the case with his favorite 
authors of other countries, he was desirous of sharing 
his "ecstasies" with others. He wrote Fyet that he had 
begun to translate Schopenhauer and begged him to take 
up the work, proposing that they should publish it to- 
gether. "After reading him," he says, "I cannot under- 
stand how his name can be unknown. The only explana- 
tion is the one he so often repeats, that there is scarcely 
any one but idiots in the world. " 

About this time he was proposing to buy a large estate 
in the "out-of-the-way part" of the Government of Penza. 
He went there, traveling third-class from Moscow to 
Nizhni Novgorod, and many of those with whom he 
talked took him for a common man. He did not purchase 
the Penza estate, but the care that he took to inspect it 
shows that he was. at that time alive to the importance of 
providing his rapidly growing family with an abundance 
of this world's goods. He invested in cattle-breeding 




Count L. N. Tolstoi, 1868. 



HISTORICAL FICTION 223 

and the purchase of fine horses the ample earnings that he 
received from his writings; he planted a large apple- 
orchard and he established a system of arboriculture 
which in due time became very profitable. His friend 
Prince D. D. Obolyensky speaks in his "Recollections" of 
Tolstoi's enthusiasm for tree-planting, fruit-culture, bee- 
keeping and the other occupations of a farmer. He also 
remembered him as a man of the world and chronicles a 
remark which he made at a ball regarding the poetry in 
women's ball-dresses: "How much thought, how much 
charm, even in the flowers pinned to the gowns!" 

After his return from Penza his household seems to 
have gone through one of those phases common to all 
families. About the middle of February, 1870, he wrote 
Fyet congratulating him on being alone. "My wife, 
three children and a fourth nursing, two old aunts, a 
nurse, and two housemaids, are all ill together; fever, 
high temperature, weakness, headaches, and coughs." 
Out of ten people only he and one of the aunts were 
able to turn up at the dinner table. He added that 
he also had been ill with his chest and side and a severe 
pain in his eyes, increased by pain, wind, and sleepless- 
ness. His illness lasted nearly a fortnight, but that had 
not prevented him from reading Shakespeare, Goethe, 
Pushkin — curiously enough he read Pushkin first in a 
French translation — Gogol, and Moliere. He had been 
occupied that whole winter with the drama and, as he 
said, with the clearness that comes with one's forty years 
had found in it much that was new. His illness was 
made endurable by characters in an imaginary comedy 
performing for him and performing very well. He ex- 
pressed a desire to read Sophocles and Euripides. 

This desire led him this year to take up the study of 
Greek. Fyet did not believe that Tolstoi would succeed, 
and offered to devote his own skin for parchment for a 
diploma of efficiency. Tolstoi replied, " Then your skin is 
in danger." In three months he was reading Herodotus. 



224 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Professor Leontief of the Katkdf Lyceum did not believe 
this to be possible and proposed that they should read 
something at sight. A passage of doubtful meaning 
came up and Ledntief had to acknowledge that Tolstoi's 
interpretation was correct. In December, 187 1, he had 
read Xenophon and was delving into Homer. He had 
become convinced that the Russian translations made 
on German models only spoiled that poet, although the 
Russian version (not made from the original) by Gnyeditch 
was regarded as a remarkably successful example of the 
hexameter. Tolstoi compared the translations to dis- 
tilled water, while the original was like water fresh from 
the spring with sun-lighted sparkle, "even the specks 
making it seem still clearer and fresher." 

He expressed his gladness that God had sent such 
folly upon him: "In the first place I enjoy it; in the 
second place I have become convinced that of all that 
human language has produced truly beautiful and simply 
beautiful, I, like all others who know but do not under- 
stand, knew nothing; and in the third place, because I 
have ceased to write and never more will write wordy 
rubbish. I am guilty of having done so, but by God I 
will do so no more." 

The effect of his study of the Greek classics, com- 
bined with ill health, tended to make him discouraged 
with his own work and his wife persuaded him to go to 
Samara for a two months' kumys cure. He started on 
the twenty-second of June, 1871, taking his brother-in- 
law and his man with him. They traveled as usual 
third class from Moscow to Nizhni Novgorod and there 
by the steamboat down the Volga to Samara. On the 
steamboat, as always in traveling, he made friends with 
every one, and young Behrs noticed that before the second 
day was ended he was on the friendliest terms even with 
the sailors. He spent the whole night with them in the 
bow of the boat. 

The last eighty miles of the journey Tolstoi and his 



HISTORICAL FICTION 225 

companions made on horseback, following up the bank 
of the river Karalufk to the Tartar village of the same 
name where he had lived nine years before. He was 
there welcomed as an old acquaintance and took up his 
residence in a kotchovka tent which he hired of a mullah 
or priest. It had formerly been used as a Metchet or 
place of worship. It was a conical structure, with a 
wooden frame covered with felt and provided with a tiny 
painted door and carpeted with soft feather-grass; but it 
was not water- proof. There were other kumys-drinkers 
there taking the cure, but most of them lived at the winter- 
village about three kilometers distant and did not mingle 
with the nomads. Tolstoi made friends of them all, how- 
ever, and Behrs saw an elderly teacher from one of the 
theological seminaries trying a match at skipping rope 
with him. A Prokurofs chief-clerk debated questions of 
literature and philosophy with him, and a young farmer 
from the vicinity of Samara became his devoted follower. 
Here lived also an exile from the Caucasus, Hadji Murat, 
who had been one of the greatest jigits among the Tchet- 
chens but had committed some mean action. He was 
still very active and nimble and fond of a joke. He be- 
came greatly attached to Tolstoi and played checkers with 
him. A posthumous story by Tolstoi bears the name of 
this "brave," and is said to be founded on his romantic 
and adventurous career. 

During the first days of his sojourn at Karaluik 
Tolstoi was ill and depressed. He complained that he 
could get neither physical nor mental pleasure and that 
he looked on everything as if he were a dead body. His 
friends at this time evidently thought that he was in 
danger of consumption, and indeed his symptoms were 
alarming. He suffered from side-ache and wrote that he 
could not help thinking — "about his side and chest." 
Turgenief gathered from what Fy£t WTOte him that as 
two of the Tolstoi brothers had died of consumption he 
was on the same downward path. He added he w r as 



226 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

"the only hope of our orphaned literature — he cannot 
and must not perish from the face of the earth as pre- 
maturely as had his predecessors, Pushkin. Lermontoi 
and Gogol.' ' 

But the heat of the atmosphere, which made him 
sweat from morning to night, the drinking of fermented 
mare's milk, the avoidance of vegetable food and the 
diet of meats, the dinner consisting of mutton eaten with 
the fingers out of wooden bowls, soon brought about a 
decided improvement in his health and spirits. He 
wrote Fyet that if it were not for home-sickness he should 
be perfectly happy. 

He began to take excursions. On one occasion he 
and three companions went for a long drive by tarantas 
through the steppe, taking their guns and provided 
with numerous presents. They had excellent duck- 
shooting at the ponds which they passed and drank plenty 
of kumys at the villages where they rested. The nomads 
followed the primitive custom of presenting their guests 
with whatever they particularly admired and they re- 
turned with several handsome horses, for which, however, 
they compensated the owners with a fair equivalent. 

On another occasion they drove to Bozulok, a village 
seventy kilometers distant, where there was held a native 
fair which attracted a motley gathering of various tribes 
and races — Russians, Cossacks, Bashkirs and Kirgiz. 

Tolstoi who had not forgotten the native language, was 
everywhere warmly welcomed and always entered with 
eager zest into the spirit of the scene. There was much 
drunkenness, but he would allow no familiarities. Once 
when a drunken muzhik attempted to embrace him the 
count gave him a stern look which abashed him. 

Tolstoi was delighted with the beauty of the country — 
"in its age just emerging from virginity, in its richness, 
its healthfulness, and especially its simplicity and in its 
unperverted population." He made up his mind to 
buy an estate here and was all the time on the lookout 



HISTORICAL FICTION 227 

for land that should suit him. He still kept up his Greek 
and wrote that he was reading Herodotus, who described 
these very people; but he made little use of the big 
dictionary that he had brought with him, and young 
Behrs found it very convenient for pressing the wonderful 
varieties of flowers that he was collecting. 

As he drove through the steppe he fell in with a colony 
of Molokans, a sect which rejected all the ritual and sym- 
bolism of the Greek Church and, as the name implies, 
drank milk on fast-days. They were distinguished for 
their honesty and industry and, unlike their neighbors, 
abstained from intoxicating liquors. An attempt was 
made by a worthy young Russian priest to convert 
these sectaries back to the "true Church," and Tolstoi 
enjoyed attending the discussions between him and 
Aggei, the venerable leader of the Molokans. He also 
studied the beliefs of the Bashkirs, and later read the 
Koran in a French translation. 



LIFE IN THE STEPPE 

Tolstoi returned from his six weeks' "cure" quite 
restored in health, and once more began to occupy 
himself with the details of popular instruction. Eugene 
Schuyler had procured for him a good selection of 
American primers and elementary reading-books. He 
had been greatly impressed with the method employed 
in one of these, of representing certain letters to the eye 
by means of diacritical marks. These books proved of 
considerable use to Tolstoi in his preparation of a series 
of text-books for elementary education. He spent an 
immense amount of time and patience in writing and 
compiling these little volumes. They ultimately con- 
sisted of a series of nine. The "Novaya Azbuka" or 
New A-B-C-book, and a First, Second and Third Reading- 
book for Russian and a similar series for the Slavonic or 
Church language. The Azbuka was advertised as includ- 
ing (a) the Russian alphabet and first exercises in reading, 
so graduated that the teaching of reading and writing 
may proceed regularly for all the requirements of 
oral as well as of written instruction; (b) fables, stories 
and tales, more than a hundred in number, graded 
according to the length of words and difficulty of pro- 
nunciation in a language comprehensible for the 
common people and for children; (c) the Slavonic 
alphabet; (d) figures; (e) prayers and commandments; 
and (f) a manual for instruction. 

The little book contains several stories derived from 
his own experiences of life — for instance, the episodes 
from the career of his dogs, Milton and Bulka, transla- 

228 



LIFE IN THE STEPPE 229 

tions and adaptations from ^Esop and from Oriental 
writers, and some builini or folk-tales in verse carefully- 
collated. There were descriptions of experiments in the 
natural sciences and interesting episodes from the monkish 
chronicles and the lives of the saints. He himself worked 
out the problems in arithmetic, and performed the experi- 
ments, and in order to introduce some knowledge of 
astronomy he sat up nights examining the stars. 

The report that he was writing stories for his reading- 
books spread abroad and various periodical editors urged 
him to give them the first opportunity to publish them. 
"A Prisoner in the Caucasus," which curiously enough 
copies the title of one of Pushkin's best-known poems, 
" Kavkazsky Plyennik," appeared in a magazine in Febru- 
ary, and " God sees the Truth," in March. These 
stories which he afterwards regarded as the best of all 
his works brought him no pecuniary return as first pub- 
lished. Since then they have appeared in various forms 
and have been read by millions of readers. 

Schuyler wrote in an article printed in 1889 that the 
publication of the Azbuka and reading-books was for- 
bidden by the Minister of Public Instruction. This is of 
course a mistake. But he had great difficulty in satis- 
fying himself with the material he wanted to include, and 
the dilatoriness of the printers exasperated him. He wrote 
a friend that the printing advanced in tortoise fashion: 
"The devil knows when it will be finished, and I am 
still adding and omitting and altering." Some weeks 
later he wrote his friend and best critic, N. Strakhof, 
that after four months the printing was not only unfin- 
ished but was not even begun ; and finally at his request 
Strakhof took entire charge of the book, having it printed 
in Petersburg and revising the proofs himself. When it 
was at last published Turgenief wrote Fyet that he found 
nothing interesting in it except "the beautiful story, 'A 
Prisoner in the Caucasus,'" and he complained of the 
absurdly high price of two rubles for four paper-covered 



230 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

books. After the first three thousand copies were sold, 
the price was greatly reduced. At first it went slowly, 
but before long it was recognized that he had, to use his 
own words, erected a monument. 

Turgenief was rejoiced to hear that Tolstoi's health 
was restored, but he did not approve of the rationalizing, 
which he felt was injuring the artist's work. "What- 
ever he does will be good if only he refrains from spoiling 
his own creations." He saw that Tolstoi, who hated 
philosophy, was nevertheless strangely infected by it, but 
he hoped that this was only a passing disease and that 
"the pure and powerful artist would be left." 

His activities after his return from Samara embraced 
many phases besides the preparation of the reading- 
books. He built a new Fligel or wing-house to accommo- 
date his growing family, and celebrated its completion 
by giving a masquerade at Christmas-tide. He created 
much amusement by capering round as a goat. 

In January, 1872, he started his school again, using the 
large hall of the new building to accommodate the thirty or 
more children that flocked to him eager to learn. He 
himself taught, assisted by his wife and children — by his 
little daughter and son. 

His brother Sergyei' lost a child and he went to him. 
Writing to Fyet, he described what he thought was the 
proper preparation for that Nirvana which, even though 
it meant nothingness, was to be faced with religious 
reverence and awe. 

He found the priests engaged in conducting the last 
services and, though both of the brothers felt a repulsion 
for the ceremonial rites, still it seemed to him that after all 
the proper way to remove the poor decaying body was to 
accompany it with a requiem and incense. The gravity 
and solemnity of that event, the most important in any 
person's life, seemed to him to demand a religious ob- 
servance Even the words of the Slavonic service evoked 
in his heart a certain metaphysical ecstasy appropriate 



LIFE IN THE STEPPE 231 

to the thought of Nirvana: religion, which had for so 
many ages rendered the same service to so many millions 
of human beings, was wonderful and it was hardly neces- 
sary to inquire if it was logical. 

In this same letter he complained of being terribly 
depressed. His strength seemed to be diminishing; for 
every day that he felt well there were three that found 
him ill. He was engaged in endless preparatory study 
for a novel which should concern itself with the reign of 
Peter the Great. His wife in a letter to her brother 
described him as engaged in this "fearfully hard work," 
sitting in his room surrounded by a huge pile of por- 
traits and pictures, of books and memoirs written for 
the most part by the contemporaries of Peter. He was 
making notes and comparing various statements, and he 
got as far as to sketch the leading characters of the epoch 
and the daily life of the boydrs and of the common 
people. It is quite likely that his attention was first 
attracted to this subject by the fact that Pushkin, the 
great poet and novelist whom he admired so much, had 
projected a history of Peter's reign, had collected mate- 
rials for it and had written and published the first chapter 
of it, beginning with the Biblical but at the same time 
extraordinary statement that he "was born at Moscow 
in the year 7180." 

The countess felt certain that her husband would pro- 
duce another prose epic like "War and Peace," but as 
time went on she began to note that his discouragement 
increased and that he complained of a lack of inspira- 
tion. Finally, without apparently having actually begun 
writing the story, he abandoned it. His estimate of the 
personality and of the public acts of that erratic and 
self-seeking Tsar was diametrically opposed to the pre- 
vailing opinion and he could find nothing in Peter to 
excite his sympathy. His own ancestor would not have 
played a very reputable role in the terrible drama of 
Peter's life. It was left for Eugene Schuyler to write the 



232 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

standard account of Peter the Great, and the task was 
very possibly suggested by Tolstoi's abortive attempt. 
As Schuyler helped put the library of Y&snaya Polyana 
in order he would have naturally seen the books Tolstoi 
collected. 

In May, 1872, Tolstoi's fourth son was born and 
christened Peter, though probably not in memory of the 
giant Tsar. 

A little later Tolstoi went for the fourth time to Samara, 
where he had now bought a large tract of uncultivated 
land. He took with him a muzhik to serve as steward 
and look af:er the property. While he was there he 
made arrangements for building a house and cultivating 
the rich virgin soil. As years went by he added to his 
holdings and in the end had an estate nine or ten times 
as big as his first investment. He came to the conclusion, 
however, that farming on the steppe was in the nature 
of gambling. If there were abundant rains in May and 
June the harvest would yield from thirty to forty fold, 
but if, as happened in 1873, there was a drought, every- 
thing was parched and ruined. 

The famine that season was so severe that nine-tenths 
of the population were destitute and starving. Tolstoi 
and young Behrs went to some of the neighboring villages 
to take an inventory of the food and stock possessed by 
the natives. They found most of the inhabitants in debt 
and looking forward in despair to the winter. Most 
of the men had gone off to search for work, but wages 
were at the very lowest ebb. They were inexpressibly 
shocked at the misery that they everywhere found. 

Tolstoi contributed an article to Katkof's paper, the 
Moscow Vyedomosti, giving heart-rending pictures of 
the conditions prevailing in that far-off country. He 
contributed a hundred rubles toward a famine fund, and 
through the aid of his aunt, the Countess Aleksandra, 
who brought the matter to the attention of the Empress, 



LIFE IN THE STEPPE 233 

about two million rubles were contributed in the course 
of the winter. 

In spite of the terrible famine and the losses and in- 
conveniences to which he and his wife were subjected, he 
was so well satisfied with his visit that during several 
succeeding years he made it a part of his summer season 
to go there either alone or with his family. They en- 
gaged a Bashkir named Mahmud Shah, in Russian 
Romanovitch, to look after the horses. He came with 
his wife and set up their kotchovka, which Tolstoi called 
the drawing-room It was neat and even luxurious with 
its carpet and cushions; a beautifully decorated saddle was 
hung up on one side. When male visitors appeared, his 
wife retired behind gay chintz curtains and handed out a 
wooden platter laden with bottles of kumys and glasses. 
Mahmud Shah was very dignified and polite and so trust- 
worthy that he was engaged again and again. Tolstoi 
bought a herd of a hundred Bashkir mares and improved 
the breed by experiments with other kinds. The herds 
rapidly increased, though once Kirghiz nomads made a 
raid on them and nearly succeeded in capturing them all. 
A sturdy pair of Bashkir plowmen chased the robbers 
away. 

When the family were at Samara they liked to live like 
Mahmud Shah in a Tartar kotchovka; and they were inter- 
ested in the primitive methods of farming — the plowing 
with five or six yoke of oxen each wearing round their 
necks deep-toned melancholy bells, and the threshing 
with a ring of horses tied head to tail and kept circling 
round and round over the sheaves while a Bashkir armed 
with a long whip acted as ring-master. 

The steppe has always had a great charm for the 
Russian, just as the desert has for the Arab. Those 
familiar with Gogol's writings will remember his poetic 
description of the Ukraine nights on the Dniepr River, 
and no less fascinating are those prairie-lands through 
which flows the mighty Volga. One might easily get lost 



234 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

in the wide expanses. One night Tolstoi and young 
Behrs had been staying late at the house of the friendly 
priest at Petrovka. It was raining and pitch-dark and 
they lost their way. Behrs was mounted on an old 
working-horse, which insisted on pulling to the left. 
Tolstoi suggested giving the horse his head. This was 
done and the horse, unguided, took them safely to the road, 
so that they knew where they were. 

On another occasion, possibly on more than one — 
Behrs says it was in 1878; Maude gives the year as 1875 
— Tolstoi sent out an announcement that there would be 
races and other sports on his estate. The well-to-do 
Russian peasants who lived in the neighboring villages 
and were always very friendly with Tolstoi', the Bashkirs 
and the Ural Cossacks were all invited. The prizes were 
to be an ox, a horse, a gun, a clock, a dressing-gown and 
other articles. The nomads came bringing tents, copper 
boilers, sheep and gallons of kumys. A level place was 
selected and a large circle five kilometers in circumference 
was marked with a plow and the starting-posts were 
erected. 

Several thousand people came. Tents were pitched 
on the steppe, where the feather-grass waved in the breeze. 
The chief men among the Bashkirs took their positions 
on conical hillocks called shishki, or cones, and sat cross- 
legged on their carpets while a young Bashkir poured 
kumys from a tursuk or leathern bottle and gravely 
handed the cup to each of the circle in turn. The weird 
minor music of the herdsmen's pipes and snatches of 
song were heard here and there. 

Wrestlers displayed their special skill. For the prin- 
cipal races thirty trained horses were brought and their 
riders were ten-year-old boys, mounted bareback. Ten 
of the horses covered the whole fifty kilometers, and the 
best time made was an hour and forty minutes. Tolstoi 
was particularly pleased because there was no police 
present; good humor and order prevailed. The guests 




Count Tolstoi in 1876. 

From the portrait by Kramskoi. 



LIFE IN THE STEPPE 235 

were treated to horse-flesh and mutton and departed 
satisfied, many of them politely thanking their host for 
his hospitality. 

To these unconventional surroundings Tolstoi loved to 
repair when he was weary of himself and of the questions 
which were again beginning to torture him more and more. 
Even his splendid new domain of rich and fertile soil 
and his three hundred head of horses would soon fail to 
satisfy him or restore his spiritual equilibrium. But at 
this time the life of the Bashkir peasants with all their 
flies, fleas and dirt — the nomadic life of millions of men 
scattered over an immense territory and struggling with 
primitive conditions — seemed to him far more important 
than, for instance, the political life of Europe, as repre- 
sented in the British Parliament. 

Tolstoi had been averse to having portraits of himself 
made either by photography or painters. But on the 
seventh of October, 1873, he wrote that for a week 
Kramskoi had been painting his picture for Tretyakof 's 
Gallery, while he sat and chatted with him and tried to 
convert him from the Petersburg faith to the faith of the 
baptized. Kramskoi had hired a datcha or country 
house a short distance from Tolstoi's home, and while 
waiting for an opportunity to get a likeness of him, 
Tolstoi discovered his desire and, urged by his wife, of 
his own accord invited him to visit them and gave him 
sittings, all the more willingly, as he says in a letter, 
because the artist offered to paint a replica for him very 
cheaply. 

The great question of the meaning of life was now 
once more to be brought home to him very keenly by a 
series of bereavements. 



VI 

EDUCATIONAL METHODS 

In November, Peter, the youngest child, died of croup 
after an illness of only two days. This was the first 
death in his family for eleven years. Tolstoi' wrote 
Fyet that while theoretically the loss of this child was 
lighter than any other would have been, still "the heart, 
especially the mother's heart — that marvelous and 
loftiest manifestation of Divinity on earth" — did not 
reason but grieved. A few months later, on the first of 
July, his dearly beloved Aunt Tatyana, who had been 
failing, "died peacefully, gradually falling asleep, and 
died, as she desired, not in the room that had been 
hers," but in another to which she had been removed at 
her own request, lest her dying there should cause unpleas- 
ant associations with it. Tolstoi says that toward the last 
she recognized hardly any one except himself. When he 
spoke to her she smiled and brightened up as an electric 
light does when one presses the button. " Sometimes she 
moved her lips trying to say the name Nicholas," thus, as 
Tolstoi noticed, completely and inseparably associating 
him with the man whom she loved with such complete 
devotion all her life. All the people in the village 
mourned for her. "She was a kind lady," they said, 
"and never did any one harm." Tolstoi said that in his 
aunt's life there was no evil — the only person of whom he 
could say that. He wrote two days after the funeral that 
though he had grown accustomed to the slow process of 
her death, it came upon him as a " quite new, isolated and 
unexpectedly moving event." 

A few months later death again came to sadden his 

236 



EDUCATIONAL METHODS 237 

household. Their youngest son, Nikolai', after three 
weeks of " terrible torture" from water on the brain, died 
at the age of ten months. About this time his wife's 
health, which had been generally robust, gave him concern. 
Families often pass through such periods of bereavement, 
when one after another falls under the sickle of the reaper 
whose name is Death. Two others followed in quick 
succession — an infant daughter, Varvara, who was born 
and died within a month; and only a month later his 
father's sister, Pelegeya Ilyinishna Yushkova, who had 
been for some time separated from her husband and had 
made her home at a monastery, though she was a frequent 
guest at Yasnaya Polyana, passed away. 

During these months of trouble and sorrow he was 
devoting himself with more zeal than ever to popular 
education. On the twenty-seventh of January, 1874, he 
addressed a learned society in Moscow on the best w T ay 
of teaching children to read. It led to a lively discussion 
on the subject of elementary education in general. 
Several well-known educators took part in it, and finally 
Tolstoi challenged them with the charge that the edu a- 
tion forced upon Russian children was wholly false, that 
all they needed was language and arithmetic, leaving 
natural science and history out of the curriculum. 

He offered to give a practical demonstration of his own 
method of teaching children how to read, and it was 
arranged that the test should be made at a school attached 
to mills, just outside the city. This led to the society's 
attempting to compare the usual conventional method 
— the so-called Lautiermethode or phonetic method — 
with Tolstoi's in two rival schools for a period of seven 
weeks. At the end of that time a committee was to 
report on the results, but there was disagreement, and 
Tolstoi felt that the test was unfair because most of the 
pupils were too young and, moreover, their attention was 
distracted by the presence of too many visitors. 

Tolstoi appealed to a wider public in a letter addressed 



238 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

to the president of the society. Under the tit e "On 
the Education of the People," it was published in 
Nekrasofs journal, the Otetchestvenuiya Zapiski, the 
Sovremennik having been suppressed for its too 
liberal tendencies. It attracted great attention and 
directly induced the Moscow Teachers' Seminary to 
give up at least one of the text-books which Tolstoi 
attacked. 

For Tolstoi his method was no longer an experiment and 
he had proved to the satisfaction of a dozen teachers, 
whom he entertained at his house in the autumn of 1872, 
that illiterate boys could be easily taught in that way. 
He had also conceived the idea of establishing a sort of 
normal school or "University in bast shoes," at which his 
Ydsnaya Polyana pupils might continue their studies and 
then become teachers ; for he felt that they would be satis- 
fied with salaries which would be scorned by those of the 
so-called educated classes. Tolstoi's friend Samarin took 
an interest in this scheme and told him that the Zemstvo, 
or County Council, held for educational purposes a fund of 
thirty thousand rubles which might be diverted to the use 
of the proposed training-school. 

This possibility stimulated him to stand for election to 
the Zemstvo, and on taking his seat he was appoin ed a 
member of the Education Committee. The question of 
the employment of the fund for his college was discussed 
and the sentiment seemed favorable to his plan; but it 
happened that this was the hundredth anniversary of the 
ukase creating the Government of Tula, and one of the older 
members of the Zemstvo proposed that the thirty thousand 
rubles should be contributed to the fund for erecting a 
great monument to the Empress Katharine the Great. 
It appealed to the thoughtless, but sentimental, majority, 
and the fund was therefore diverted from a far more 
useful object; and Tolstoi, thus hindered and hampered, 
soon abandoned his plan. 

His wife objected to his educational activities. She 



EDUCATIONAL METHODS 239 

wrote her brother how sorry she felt that his strength 
should be spent on these things instead of what she felt 
was his legitimate work — novel writing. One day about 
this time he picked up a volume of Pushkin's works, which 
a relative had been reading, and opening it casually his 
eye fell on the first sentence of the second fragment of 
"The Egyptian Nights' ' — "The guests had assembled 
at the . . . datcha. The drawing-room was full of 
ladies and gentlemen who had arrived simultaneously 
from the theater, where a new Italian opera had been 
given." This was Pushkin's characteristic way of mak- 
ing a start, both in his prose and his verse. In the 
same way begins that weird ballad "Utoplennik" — 
"The Drowned Man" — "The children ran into the izba. 
In haste they called their father : ' Daddy, Daddy, our nets 
have brought a corpse ashore.' " 

At that moment some -one came into the room. " Here 
is something charming," exclaimed Tolstoi. "This is 
the way to write ! Pushkin goes to the heart of the thing. 
Any one else would have described first of all the guests, 
the rooms and so on, but he goes straight at the matter 
in hand." 

It was laughingly suggested that he had better begin a 
novel in that way. Tolstoi gave orders that he should not 
be disturbed, shut himself up in his room and wrote the 
first sentences of "Anna Karenina": "All happy fami- 
lies resemble one another; every unhappy family is 
unhappy in its own way. All was in confusion at the 
Oblonskys'. " Pushkin would have undoubtedly left out 
the first sentence, which when analyzed is seen to be at 
least only a half truth. 

This was in March, 1873. He could not have made 
great progress with it, for in early October he informed Fy et 
that he was beginning to write, and though he took a 
part of the novel to Moscow in the spring of the following 
year, none of it appeared until 1875. During the first 
four months of that year instalments were printed in the 



2 4 o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Russky Vyestnik. Tolstoi, who had declared "with 
tears of joy in his eyes" that his self-love had never been 
so pleasantly flattered as when his brother-in-law told 
him that his novels were the favorite reading of the young 
men at the Law School, now wrote Fyet that assuredly 
no writer was so indifferent to success as he was. He 
affected to be indifferent to the efforts made by Turg£nief 
and Mme. Viardot to popularize his works in France. 
Yet he was much pleased that Fyet praised "Anna 
Karenina." Turgenief on the other hand was not well 
pleased with the new novel. He detected in it the old 
Moscow influences — the narrow-minded Slavophil nobil- 
ity, and Orthodox old maids. "It smelled rancid with 
holy oil!" and "the truly splendid" passages — thedescrip 
tions of the steeple-chase, the mowing and the hunt — did 
not redeem it in his eyes from being in other parts dull 
and shallow. 

As in the case of "War and Peace," "Anna Karenina" 
was written spasmodically and published at intervals of 
considerable length. During the summer, when the house 
was filled with guests and the heat made him comfortably 
stupid, he neglected his writing. Thus in early August, 
1876, he wrote to Fyet that every day he got ready to write 
but could not find time because he was doing — nothing! 
The necessity of getting leisure for new occupations soon 
compelled him to work again on "dull, commonplace 
'Anna,'" which he said was beginning to weary him; 
and the first four numbers of the Russky Vyestnik 
for 1876 saw its continuation and what the French 
call a recrudescence of popular interest. It is said 
that ladies in Moscow were so excited over it that they 
would send to the printing-house to see if they could 
learn how the story was going to end. 

Domestic affairs were not going well with him, and he 
complained that his wife's ill health interfered with its 
order and brought about a lack of mental tranquillity 
which he particularly needed for his literary work. 



VII 



About this time a remarkable change was noticed in Tol- 
stoi's relation to the Church. His brother-in-law says that 
in 1876 his religious ideas and his mode of life underwent 
a revolution. He began to attend punctually the services, 
and every morning he retired to his room in order, as he 
expressed it, to commune with God. He made a pil- 
grimage on foot to the Optin Monastery near Kaluga. 
He lost much of his former gayety and evidently strove to 
cultivate a gentler and humbler spirit. 

The same phenomenon was noticed by his servant, 
Aleksei' Arbuzof. Formerly, whenever the priest came 
to see his Aunt Yushkova and went through his cere- 
monies with holy water and incense, he invariably stayed 
out until the priest had departed; but on one occasion a 
priest named Vasily Ivanovitch from the Tula Seminary 
was detained at Yasnaya Polyana by a severe snowstorm, 
and Tolstoi got into a conversation with him which lasted 
all night. "From that time," says Arbuzof, "Tolstoi 
became very thoughtful/' and when the next Lent came 
round he said he was going to perform his devotions 
and prepare to receive the communion; and from that 
day he seldom missed a Sunday, so that the whole village 
was surprised and wondered what the priest had told 
the count to make him so suddenly fond of attending 
church. 

Yet about the same time he had monuments erected to 
the memory of his parents and the seals and family 
portraits cleaned and repaired, and Behrs thought that he 
was still proud of his success. Speaking of the life led 
in court circles, he claimed that the higher places were not 

241 



242 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

given for good and faithful service but rather as a reward 
for those who knew how to please and flatter the ones in 
power. It amused him to say that whereas he had failed 
to be promoted to the rank of general in the artillery, still 
he had won his generalship in literature. But even that 
was beginning to seem to him an empty honor in com- 
parison with the real things of life. In his " Confession " 
he says: — 

"The impulse toward creation was in my case actually 
sincere. But I was also thirsty for glory. And there is 
no doubt that the desire for literary glory is a vain desire. 
Of course I wrote from vanity, or at least mingled with 
my writing this pitiful motive. Nor was I indifferent 
to the enormous amounts of money which I received 
merely because, by following my inclination, I wrote, 
almost without any effort, little stories and novels. I 
made bargains for them : I not only repaired my fortune but 
even increased it by this money. And, of course, I was 
not different from other people in this business and this 
money-getting. Pride — there was more of this than of 
anything else — the pride of strength, of which I was long 
unwitting, the baseness and folly of which I did not 
realize, pride was my first sin; and long, very long, I 
struggled with it. I am often afraid that there is 
pride in the fact that I openly, before all, express my 
repentance." 

There was a touch of his old whimsicalness in a letter 
written to Fyet in March, 1876. He said: "I keep 
hoping that a tooth will become loose either in your jaw 
or in your threshing-machine, so that you will have to go to 
Moscow. Then I will spin a cobweb and catch you on 
the way." 

But when the next month he learned that Fyet had 
been desperately ill and had even thought of sending for 
him to "come and see how he departed," he wrote under 
date of May 19, expressing his gratitude that Fyet had 
wanted him in such a moment. He promised to act the 



"ANNA KARENINA" 243 

same as if he were a brother. "When death draws 
near," he said, " intercourse with men who look beyond 
the bounds of this life is precious and comforting; and 
you and those rare genuine men I have met always stand 
on the verge and see clearly, for the very reason that 
they look now at Nirvana — the illimitable, the unknown — • 
and now at Samsara,* and that sight of Nirvana strength- 
ens their vision. 

"But worldly men, however much they may talk 
about God, are displeasing to you and me and must be a 
torment when one is dying.' ' 

He told Fyet that much that he had been thinking 
about death and the preparation for it he had tried to 
express in the twentieth chapter of Part V. of "Anna 
Karenina." In this, Levin, having received a letter from 
his brother Nikolai's mistress informing him that he was 
dying, has a most natural and lifelike quarrel with Kitty 
and then takes her with him to the sordid, terrible death- 
bed of that wreck of humanity, the prototype of whom 
was, to a certain extent at least, his own brother. 

The final chapters of "Anna Karenina" were written 
at a time when Russia was urged and finally driven 
to take a hand in the troubles between the Danubian 
principalities and Turkey. Russian volunteers, as illus- 
trated by Vronsky, went to help their coreligionists in 
Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, in their desperate in- 
surrection against the cruel regime of the Sultan. The 
massacres committed by the Bashi-Bazuks caused the 
greatest excitement in Russia. In November, 1876, 
Tolstoi went to Moscow to learn what he could of the 
approaching war. He found that every one was talking 
about it; that there were balls, concerts, lectures and all 
kinds of activities engaged in in behalf of the Danubian 
Christians. Greatly agitated, he wrote Fyet how it fright- 
ened him to reflect on the complexity of the conditions 

*Samsara is in Buddhistic theory the endless cycle of birth, action 
and death or transmigration. 



244 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

amid which history is made and how often some woman 
with her vanity becomes an essential cog in the great 
machine. 

He expressed his doubts as to the motives of the volun- 
teers, and in the person of Levin's half-brother Koznuishdf , 
who was disappointed at the failure of his book, criti- 
cised the Slavonic question as simply one of those fash- 
ionable movements which give society something to think 
about and amuse themselves with and enable self-seekers, 
especially journalists, to double their income and attract 
attention to themselves. Katkof, who was a strong 
Slavophil, objected to some of Tolstoi's strictures and re- 
turned to him portions of the manuscript with emenda- 
tions stating that he could not print it unless the 
emendations were adopted. 

Tolstoi entertained a strong feeling of contempt for 
journalists and critics, refusing to rank them with even 
writers of the lowest order. He was so indignant with 
Katkof for daring to suggest such changes that he issued 
the last part of the story in pamphlet form, leaving 
Katkdf to end it in his magazine as best he could.* 
He wrote Fyet that the Russky Vyestnik had "the dullest 
and deadest editorial office in existence." 

Tolstoi' realized that the philosophic disquisitions 
introduced into " War and Peace," interrupting the flow 
of the narrative, were out of place in fiction and he 
employed this method of disseminating his doctrines 
much more sparingly in "Anna Karenina." The 

* Katkof printed a footnote at the end of the May instalment, which 
said: — 

"In our last number, at the close of the instalment of 'Anna Karenina/ 
we announced 'Conclusion in the next issue.' But with the heroine's death 
ends the real story. According to the author's plan there will be a short 
epilogue, in which the reader will learn that Vronsky, overwhelmed at 
Anna's death, departs for Serbia as a volunteer; that all the other char- 
acters remain alive and well; that Levin lives on his estate and rages 
against the Slavophil party and the volunteers." 

The footnote generously suggested that the author's ending would 
probably be developed in a special edition of the novel. 



"ANNA KARENINA" 245 

books, as he said, were written to amuse; yet he never 
forgets that he is a teacher of morals. He shows up the 
shallowness of high life; he exposes the consequences 
of wrong-doing, and lays the stress of his personal pref- 
erence on the quiet country life. 

The stream, however, could not rise higher than its 
source, and his own mental and spiritual condition was 
hardly satisfactory enough to enable him to make Levin 
a wholly sympathetic character — one to be taken as a 
model. 

Levin — as the name (sometimes pronounced Ledvin) 
would in itself indicate — is in a way autobiographic. At all 
events one could formulate from Levin's experiences and 
observations a pretty fair statement of Tolstoi's own phil- 
osophy of life as at that time developed. As in the 
case of almost all realistic novels, the course of which 
flows like life itself, where there is no deeply complicated 
plot to be unraveled, those who know or claim to know 
are able to point out the ground-work of fact on which 
the superstructure is built. It is said that a lady named 
Anna, who had been living with one of Tolstoi's neighbors, 
committed suicide by throwing herself under a train of 
cars; she was jealous of her lover's attention to a gover- 
ness.* A few years ago another original of Anna was 

* " We have just learned of a very dramatic story. Do you remember 
Anna Stepanovna at Bibikof's ? Well, this Anna Stepanovna was jealous of 
all the governesses at Bibikof . She made her jealousy so manifest that 
finally Bibikof grew angry and quarreled with her. Then Anna Stepa- 
novna left his house and went to Tula. For three days no one knew 
where she was. At last, on the third day, she was seen at Yasenskoye, at 
five P.M., with a small parcel. At the railway station she entrusted the 
izvoshchik with a note for Bibikof and gave him a ruble as a tip. 

" Bibikof refused to take the note and when the izvoshchik returned 
to the station, he learned that Anna Stepanovna had thrown herself 
under the train and was crushed to death. She had undoubtedly done 
it intentionally. The coroner came and they read him the note. It 
said : — 

' 'You are my murderer: be happy if assassins can be happy. If you 
wish you can see my corpse on the rails at Yasenskoye.' 

"Lyof Nikolayevitch and Uncle Kostya have gone to the autopsy." 
— From letter of Countess Tolstaya, January 22, 1872. 



246 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

living in Tokyo. She, however, instead of cutting the 
Gordian knot by self-destruction, quietly waited till her 
husband died and then reputably married the man whom 
every one knew she loved. 

Divorce is certainly preferable to suicide, and it is not 
strange that the large and growing number of thoughtful 
Russians who believed that the Church view of divorce 
induced immorality could hardly be satisfied with Tol- 
stoi's implicit condemnation of divorce and his settle- 
ment of tangled marital relationships. 

This is a question which calls for discussion and 
solution; but its settlement one way or another by a 
novelist hardly affects the estimate of the novel in which 
it is treated, since the novelist has assuredly the right to 
introduce any character he may please into his story and 
make him as sympathetic or antipathetic as seems good 
to him. 

By the dramatic vividness of dialogue, by the brilliant 
coloring of scenes depicted, both rural and urban, by 
the inevitable development of character, by the natural- 
ness of the personages introduced, by the conviction that 
you are reading life itself, "Anna Karenina" must be 
considered as one of the great literary masterpieces of the 
world. One may pick flaws in it; the microscopic critic 
will find plenty, but they are the broken pieces of bark 
on the trunk of a lofty tree, they are the shallows in a 
mighty river. 

Why, then, did Tolstoi belittle "War and Peace" and 
"Anna Karenina"? 

Because in accordance with his theory of Art they, like 
the great paintings of modern artists, or the great sympho- 
nies or the great operas of the modern composers, re- 
quire a special culture to understand them and are above 
the heads of the great mass of human beings. 

By the same reasoning one might just as well argue that 
the sun goes around the earth because the great mass 
of human beings have always believed that it did and to 



"ANNA KARENINA" 247 

the great mass of human beings the testimony of their 
eyes proves that the "sun does move." 

If Count Tolstoi had applied his own reasoning to his 
philosophic questionings, he might have saved himself the 
terrible struggle that from now on began to involve him 
and almost drove him to suicide. 

The majority of people make no bugbear of life; they 
accept death as a part of the order of the Universe; they 
live and in spite of what the Sanskrit philosopher summed 
up into one long word — rogofokaparitapabandhanavy- 
asanani — "disease, pain, grief, captivity and misfortune," 
they are on the whole happy. When they come to die, 
relapsing quietly into unconsciousness, they pass on with 
the exhilaration of the new birth. 

It is always well in reading any of the great works of 
Russian literature to take into consideration the conditions 
under which it was produced. Two phases, perhaps 
three phases, of life were familiar to Count Tolstoi. He 
knew the army; he had been initiated into the fast set 
of Moscow and Petersburg; and he was acquainted with 
the simple, superstitious, friendly Russian peasantry. The 
great gap between the upper and the lower classes else- 
where in Europe, especially in England, filled with beings 
of quite different modes of thought and action, and fur- 
nishing to the Thackerays, the Dickenses, the Hugos, 
the Trollopes and dozens of other novelists, a wonderful 
field for fiction, was to him almost a void. He could 
not have created a Solomon as Turgenief did. 

As a realist he wrote from experience. Even the tooth- 
ache from which Vronsky is suffering, as he sits in his 
solitary despair waiting for the train to start, is Tol- 
stoi's own toothache, and his greatest model was him- 
self. He was more interesting to himself than any one 
else ever was, and the introspection which is always a 
dangerous study brought him to the verge of insanity. 

After "Anna Karenina" was published, for a time he 
took an interest in the practical details of his property. 



J 



248 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

He had bought more land at Nikolskoye. He had also 
visited Orenburg and bought more horses. He had re- 
ceived from Fyet a " beautiful stallion" which came at a 
time when his life seemed to consist " chiefly of visions 
now pleasant and now unpleasant, from some absurd 
world not ruled by sanity." A little later he sent his 
horses to Samara in charge of a Tartar, who, either, if 
he told the truth, mired Guneba (which cost two thou- 
sand rubles) in a bog when ten miles away, or, if the 
countess's suspicions were correct, disposed of it and 
said he had lost it. 



VIII 

TQLSTOI AND MUSIC 

Tolstoi was always fond of music, and while com- 
pleting "Anna Karenina" and at the same time grow- 
ing more and more dissatisfied with his life, it chanced 
that he made the acquaintance of the great composer 
Piotr Uyitch Tchaikovsky, who had just been succeeded 
by Nikolai Rubinstein as director of the Moscow Con- 
servatory. In December, 1876, they spent two evenings 
together, and Tchaikovsky wrote his sister that he was 
at first "perfectly fascinated by his ideal personality" — 
but felt a certain terror of him lest "the great searcher of 
human hearts" should be able to read his inmost soul. 
On one evening Rubinstein arranged a concert for Tol- 
stoi's special pleasure and the Andante from the D Major 
Quartet was played. Tchaikovsky said that never in 
his life had he been so flattered or had his vanity as a 
composer been so tickled as when Tolstoi, on hearing 
it, burst into tears. 

Tolstoi, on returning to Yasnaya Polyana, sent Tchai- 
kovsky a collection of folk-songs, recommending them 
to him as a wonderful treasure, but urging him to use 
them in the Mozart-Haydn style and not in the Bee- 
thoven - Schumann - Berlioz,* artificial, always - seeking- 
something-unexpected style. 

Tchaikovsky thanked Tolstoi for sending them, but 
called his attention to the fact that they had been trans- 
scribed by an unskillful hand, so that they showed only 
slight traces of their pristine beauty. " The chief defect," 

*Polzuites f mozartovsTzo-haydnovshom rodye a nye f beethoveno-shu- 
mano-berliozo-hkusstvennom, ishchushchem neozhidannavo, rodye, 

249 



250 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

he wrote, "is that they have been artificially squeezed 
and forced into a regular measured form. Only Russian 
dance-music has a rhythm and a regular and evenly 
accentuated beat; but folk-songs have of course nothing 
in common with dance melodies. Moreover, most of 
these songs are, it seems to me, arbitrarily written in a 
solemn D major, which again does not suit a real Russian 
song." 

He thought the songs Tolstoi sent him could not be 
worked up in a regular and systematic way, because 
they did not represent the manner in which the peasants 
sang them and he knew of only one or two people of 
exceptionally fine musical feeling and great learning who 
would be able to undertake such a task. But he wel- 
comed the songs as useful for symphonic treatment and 
promised to avail himself of them in one way or another. 

It is perhaps interesting to know that the collections 
of Russian folk-songs edited by Kotsipinsky, Tchai- 
kovsky, Ruimsky-Korsakdf and others — generally in a 
rather sophisticated form — have recently been supple- 
mented by collections made by aid of the phonograph 
and of course giving accurately the natural harmoniza- 
tions as they are sung spontaneously in all parts of 
Russia. This task has been accomplished under 
governmental auspices. 

Tchaikovsky was disappointed in Tolstoi. He thought 
it unworthy of him to deny genius to Beethoven, and he 
was evidently piqued that Tolstoi wanted merely to chat 
with him about music and scarcely took him seriously. 
He avoided meeting Tolstoi again but still found delight 
in his novels. 

Tolstoi did not really deny genius to Beethoven and 
Schumann. Kashkin understood his attitude perfectly 
and explained it as the result of a struggle between his 
artistic and his moral nature and his attempt to be sin- 
cere. His very sincerity drove him to contradictory 
opinions, according as he approached art from the view- 



TOLSTOI AND MUSIC 251 

point of a moral philosopher or expressed the immediate 
sensation that it made on his deeply sensitive nature. 

To illustrate this he tells how at one of the musical 
evenings at Tolstoi's house a piano quartet by Schumann 
was played, and when it was ended Tolstoi, in a voice 
quivering with excitement, said: "To my shame I must 
acknowledge that I did not until now know that admirable 
work." 

"The obscure, almost morbid excitement" evoked by 
Beethoven's music — he had himself experienced it — he 
afterwards exploited in the story called after the C Sharp 
Minor or Kreutzer Sonata. He treats of the same subject 
also very fully in his iconoclastic treatise on art. 

When "Anna Karenina" was off his hands, Tolstoi once 
more reverted to the plan for his Dekabrist novel; but 
again he found his heart was not in it. 

Afterwards Tchaikovsky wrote in his diary that there 
was only one great man who to him was incomprehen- 
sible, who stood alone and aloof in his greatness — Lyof 
Tolstoi. "But often," he says, "I feel angry with him; 
I almost hate him. Why, I ask myself, should this man, 
who more than all his predecessors has power to depict 
the human soul with such wonderful harmony, who can 
fathom our poor intellect and follow the most secret and 
tortuous windings of our moral nature — why must he 
needs come out as a preacher and set himself up to be 
our teacher and monitor ? Hitherto he has succeeded in 
making a deep impression by the recital of simple, every- 
day events. We might have read between the lines his 
noble love for mankind, his compassion for our helpless- 
ness, our mortality and our pettiness. How T often have I 
wept over his words without knowing why. . . . Per- 
haps because for a moment I was brought into contact — 
through him as a medium — with the ideal, with absolute 
happiness and with humanity. 

"Now he comes as commentator on texts, claiming a 
monopoly in the solution of all questions of faith and 



252 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

ethics. . . . Once Tolstoi was a demi-god. Now he 
is merely a priest!" 

Again he wrote: "I am more than ever convinced that 
Tolstoi is the greatest of all writers of all time; yet in 
my conviction of his immortal greatness, of his almost 
divine importance, mere patriotism plays no part." 

The winter of 1876 Tolstoi went with young Behrs to 
Petersburg with the intention of going over the fortress of 
Petropavlovsk, and especially the Aleksei dungeons, where 
the Dekabrist conspirators had been confined. The com- 
mandant, an officer under whom he had served in the 
Crimean War, received him courteously but told him that 
while any one could enter the dungeons only the Emperor, 
the commandant and the chief of the gendarmes could 
ever leave them again. 

The Dekabrists had been the first to work out a regular 
alphabet of sounds so that the prisoners confined in 
neighboring cells could communicate with one another 
by tapping on the wall. Tolstoi related an anecdote of 
a Dekabrist who bribed a sentinel to buy an apple for 
him. The shopkeeper, learning that it was for a prisoner, 
not only sent him a fine basket of fruit but also returned 
to him the purchase money. Tolstoi was much moved 
by that fine spirit of sympathy. He related also a story 
characteristic of those high-hearted young reformers: 
Lunin, a colonel of the horse-guards, wrote a letter to 
his sisters and referred sarcastically to the appointment 
of CountJjKiselyef to a high post. The letter was read, 
and Lunin was condemned to hard labor in chains; but 
nothing could break his spirit. 

Behrs gives as a reason for Tolstoi's abandoning the 
Dekabrist novel his theory that it was not a national move- 
ment but merely a sporadic phenomenon brought about by 
French emigres, who after the French Revolution served 
as tutors in Russian families and converted the young 
aristocrats to liberal ideas and to Catholicism. This, 
Behrs says, was sufficient to prevent Tolstoi from sympa- 



TOLSTOI AND MUSIC 253 

thizing with it. More likely it was because he had been 
refused permission to study the State archives and he 
knew that all freedom of treatment was hopeless. In a 
letter to Fyet he said that he flattered himself that what he 
should write would be intolerable to those who shoot men 
for the good of humanity. 

He had been staying in Moscow, where he complained 
that he was in a state of irresponsibility, his nerves out of 
tune and his feelings ruffled by the people whom he did 
not want to see preventing him from seeing those whom 
he did. 

The same month he wrote Fyet again, telling him how 
he had been incessantly thinking "about the chief 
problem' ' — the deity. In all ages the best men had 
thought about God, and he felt that if he could not think 
about Him as these men did, some way of thinking 
about Him must be found. 

A little later Tolstoi, with his friend and literary 
adviser, N. N. Strakhof, made Fyet a visit. He was 
greatly captivated by the piano-playing of a Fraulein 
Oberlander, who had the great gift of being able to read 
anything at sight, and with perfect expression. Tolstoi 
played duets with her. 

He and Strakhof also visited the monastery of Optin, 
situated west of Tula in the Government of Kaluga, and 
had long conversations, not to say disputes, with the 
starets or Father Superior, Ambrosy. He was anxious 
to learn from Orthodox believers, but he found little satis- 
faction in their doctrines: it was lip service; they hardly 
lived according to what they professed. They, like him- 
self, still feared poverty and death. 

At this monastery he made the acquaintance of a monk 
who had formerly been an officer in the Guards and who 
may possibly have furnished him with the subject of his 
posthumous novel, " Father Sergyel," the hero of which 
is a monk who had once been a man of the world but in 
spite of his reputation for sanctity yields to temptation 



254 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

and becomes an outcast. It is a variation of the old 
legend of Thai's, set to music by Massenet. 

The year before Tolstoi had stayed at the Buzuluk 
Monastery near Samara and had there talked with a hermit 
who lived in the catacombs, slept in a coffin and sat under 
an apple-tree which he had planted forty years before. 
Tolstoi believed that this hermit, who was visited by 
numerous pilgrims, offered them an example of a pure, 
unworldly life and therefore supplied a genuine want. 

He also talked on the same subjects with a detachment 
of Turkish prisoners-of-war who were quartered in an 
abandoned sugar-factory between Yasnaya Polyana and 
Tula. He was interested to find that each one of them 
had a copy of the Koran. 

On his way back from Optin he visited his friend Prince 
Obolyensky and there renewed acquaintance with Nikolai 
Rubinstein, whose music enchanted him. 

That same summer he got material for a number of 
his shorter stories from an itinerant story-teller, who had 
the gift of narration in simple and beautiful language. 
From him he obtained "What Men Live By," "The 
Three Hermits," and some others. He retold the beauti- 
ful legend, "Where Love is, there God is Also," in the 
same way from a French original, and the story of "The 
Archbishop and the Thief" in the Second Reader is 
greatly condensed from "Les Miserables." In the way 
he made use of whatever attracted his attention he re- 
minds one of our own Benjamin Franklin. An article 
appeared in one of the Russian reviews on Tolstoi's 
plagiarisms; but he, like other great men, took his own 
wherever he saw it. 

Tolstoi, in his "Confession," tells how after he had 
finished "Anna Karenina" he was reduced to such a 
state of despair that he was constantly tempted to suicide. 
He hid away a cord to avoid hanging himself to the 
transom in his room, and gave up hunting with a gun 



TOLSTOI AND MUSIC 255 

because it offered too easy a way of getting rid of that 
life which had ceased to have any meaning for him. 

Yet all the circumstances of his life w T ere preeminently 
happy; he was at the prime of his powers mental and 
physical; he had a good, loving and beloved wife, good 
children, a large estate which without too much trouble on 
liis part was growing and increasing in value; he had 
fame and fortune, and he himself declares that he had 
not gone mad nor was he in a morbid mental state; on 
the contrary, he enjoyed a mental and physical strength 
such as he seldom found in men of his class and of his 
pursuits; he could keep up with a peasant in mow T ing 
and could continue mental labor for eight or ten hours 
at a stretch without evil consequences, and yet had come 
to such a state that he could not live; and as he feared 
death he was obliged to employ devices to keep himself 
from ending his life! 

It would almost seem as if there entered into " My Con- 
fession" something of the fictional element: in study- 
ing himself he involuntarily fills out the outlines of de- 
spair that exist in every soul and makes the picture more 
complete than it was in real life. The immense curiosity 
to know what is in the Beyond has made many a man 
look at deep water or handle a pistol with a conscious- 
ness that it lies in his power to solve that insistent 
problem. 

Tolstoi wrote to Fyet on the eighteenth of April, 1878, 
that he had become so indifferent to the things of this 
life that life itself had become uninteresting and that he 
depressed others by his eternal pouring "from void into 
vacuum, as the Russian proverb puts it." But he added, 
"Do not suppose that I have gone mad; I am merely 
out of sorts." 

And while, according to " My Confession," he was going 
through these agonies of soul, he wrote to Fyet (June 25, 
1878) that he had seldom enjoyed God's world so much 
as he had that summer. He was afraid to stir lest he 



256 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

should lose something of its beauty. In the same letter 
he gives a whimsical picture of himself. He did not 
know what had become of his Dekabrists; but any one 
looking would see an old man, a staritchok, a good fellow, 
beloved of every one and equally loving every one, who, 
having translated two or three pages of Schopenhauer, 
played a game of billiards, killed a woodcock, inspected 
a colt, was sitting with his wife drinking a glass of deli- 
cious tea and smoking when suddenly, to interrupt the 
idyl, comes a newspaper damp and ill-smelling; it arouses 
a sense of estrangement, a feeling that he neither loves 
nor is loved; he begins to speak in angry tones and 
suffers. 

Then, becoming more serious, he defends himself from 
Fy et's charge that he denied practical life. It seemed to him 
that the greater part of men's lives was filled with gratifi- 
cation of artificial needs, those that came of a false educa- 
tion, and those that had been invented and had grown 
into a habit ; therefore nine-tenths of the labor of men 
required for fulfilling these artificial needs was useless. 

He wanted to convince himself that he was giving men 
more than he received from them; he wanted to take as 
little as possible from them and to work as little as pos- 
sible for the gratification of his own needs, but as he 
confessed himself inclined to value his own work very 
highly and to undervalue the work of others he had no 
hope of squaring things up by working more and harder, 
though he could easily feel that the work that he liked 
best was the most important and most needful. 

He ended by recommending Fyet to read Solomon — the 
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Wisdom. He 
was to read them in Slavonic, for both the Russian and 
the English translations were bad. He had been so suc- 
cessful in inspiring Fyet with a liking for the " Thousand 
Nights and One" and the "Pensees " of Pascal that he was 
sure that this new recommendation of an ancient master- 
piece, which he had been reading with ecstasy and which 



TOLSTOI AND MUSIC 257 

had much in common with Schopenhauer and was per- 
fectly modern, would also please him. 

One of the pleasant episodes of this summer was the 
renewal of friendly relations with Turgenief. Tolstoi 
himself first held out the olive-branch, and Turgenief 
was greatly gladdened and touched. He wrote that if 
ever hostile feelings had existed they had long since dis- 
appeared: "The recollection of you exists only as of a 
man to whom I am sincerely attached; of a writer whose 
first steps it was my good fortune to be the first to hail 
and whose every new w r ork has always aroused in me the 
liveliest interest." 

Tolstoi as usual spent a part of the summer in Samara. 
On his return he had a two days' visit from Turgenief. 
Tolstoi, accompanied by his brother-in-law, drove to Tula 
to fetch him. Turgenief played a game of chess with Tol- 
stoi's oldest son and from inattention nearly lost it. At 
dinner he talked a great deal and delighted the younger 
members of the family by his imitations, not only of people 
but of different animals. With his fingers he made the 
figures of a waddling fowl and of a hunting dog at loss. 
He told how he had acted the part of a satyr at Mme. 
Viardot's private theatricals, and he made the company 
feel uncomfortable by seeming to justify himself for 
playing the fool for that Circe's amusement. He gave 
an interesting account of his confinement in the Spassky 
police-station when he was arrested for his article on 
Gogol's death. 

The two great writers had long and lively discussions 
on philosophy and religion, and w T hen Turgenief toward 
midnight had to take his departure Tolstoi drove him to 
the station. Turgenief came back again in early Sep- 
tember, and Tolstoi told Fyet that he was just the same 
and the abyss between them was still wide. 

As the autumn drew on, Tolstoi's mood, as often hap- 
pened, changed. He wrote Turgenief complaining of 
some "mental illness," and must have charged Turgenief 



258 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

with having ridiculed something that he had written. 
Turgenief defended himself warmly and asked why such 
''reflexive feelings" were current only among authors 
and not among musicians, painters and other artists, and 
suggested that it was probably because writers exposed 
more of the soul than it was advisable to let others see. 

Tolstoi took offense at this and wrote Fyet in the ex- 
pression of a common Russian, saying that he had decided 
that it would be best for him to keep farther away from 
Turgenief and from sin. But Turgenief was very glad 
to have had a reconciliation with Tolstoi and told his 
friends of having spent three pleasant days with him, 
finding his whole family sympathetic and his wife 
charming. 

He returned to Paris more than ever zealous to spread 
abroad a knowledge of Tolstoi. "We Russians," he 
wrote, "have long known that he has no rival." 

Years before Turgenief invited Charles Edmond and 
a friend to his room, promising them a surprise. They 
supposed that he was going to show them a new story, 
but they had never before heard him speak in such flatter- 
ing terms of his own writings. Turgenief took from his 
writing-table a roll of paper. "Listen, " he said, "here is 
copy for your paper of an absolutely first-rate kind. Of 
course I am not its author. The master, for he is a real 
master, is almost unknown. But I assure you on my 
soul and conscience . . ." 

A day or two later he Temps published Tolstoi's 
Sevastopol Sketches. Again in October, 1878, Turgenief 
was preparing to translate "The Cossacks" into French; 
he took great pleasure in helping to acquaint the French 
public with the best story that had been written in 
Russian. 

At the very time when Tolstoi was expressing his terror 
of death, Turgenief was apparently going through some- 
what the same phase. While, like Tolstoi, he was satis- 
fied with his successes, having had every pleasure that 



TOLSTOI AND MUSIC 259 

he could wish for, having won fame, having loved and 
been loved, yet having worked, he wrote to Polonsky in 
1877 : " In my soul there is a darkness blacker than night. 
The day passes like an instant, empty, aimless, color- 
less. . . . We have no longer a right to live, no more 
desire to live. . . . We are the vibrations of a vase broken 
long ago." 

It would almost seem as if the malady affecting these 
two so dissimilar spirits was a reflex of the tragedy that 
was tearing Russia. That very year, 1877, political 
trials were laying bare the fact that the young men and 
women of the best families were carrying on the revo- 
lutionary propaganda by securing employment in factories 
and gaining the confidence of the common people so as 
to interest them in the Revolution. The waves from 
these comparatively small vortexes — like those that carry 
the messages of wireless telegraphy — could not help im- 
pinging on the lives of Turgenief, who by this time was 
out of sympathy with the Revolutionists, and of Tolstoi, 
who was to be the greatest Revolutionist of them all. 

In September, 1877, Tolstoi was in Moscow looking 
for a teacher and a tutor. He engaged Vasily Ivanovitch 
Alekseyef, who after graduating from the University of 
Petersburg had gone to Kansas w T ith the socialist col- 
ony, and when that Utopian plan for founding a new re- 
ligion failed returned to Russia. Through him Tolstoi 
came into contact with an interesting phase of socialism. 
Some years afterwards he wrote him : " You were the first 
man (influenced by education) whom I knew to confess 
not in words but in spirit the faith that has become for 
me a clear and steady light." But Tolstoi always stood 
aloof from direct affiliation with any of the reform or 
revolutionary parties that tried to change Russian poli- 
tics. He was too great to be satisfied with Panslavism, 
however extensive that movement was; he had no sym- 
pathy with bomb-throwing and assassination, though it 
was evident enough that most of those that belonged to 



260 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

the Terrorists had the courage that makes men regard 
their lives as of no account. 

Tolstoi had been deeply impressed by Schopenhauer, 
but Schopenhauer's philosophy was no aid to him in the 
spiritual conflict which he describes so microscopically 
in "My Confession." The answer of Philosophy was 
merely negative, and the question why he lived remained 
unanswered. Faith, as he had been taught to regard 
it, was irrational. Yet he was ready to accept any 
faith which demanded of him no direct denial of reason. 
That explains why he studied Buddhism and Moham- 
medanism and the various forms of Christianity. He 
says he seized on these representatives of religion and 
tried to find the basis of their beliefs — the Orthodox, the 
priests, the monks, the Church theologians, the Evan- 
gelicals. The so-called Evangelicals were represented by 
Baedeker, the international preacher, whom Tolstoi' intro- 
duced into "Resurrection" under the name of Kiese- 
wetter. 

Comparing the hard-working but illiterate and super- 
stitious masses with the well-to-do of his own class, Tolstoi 
found that they "live and suffer and approach death with 
tranquillity and in most cases gladly." According to his 
test, therefore, the faith professed by these people — in- 
cluding pilgrim monks, as well as the common peasants 
and the various members of various sects — was superior 
to what the upper classes affected to believe. 

Tolstoi reasoned that his past life had been that of a 
parasite — he had not earned his own living and therefore 
his life had been senseless and evil. He had agreed with 
the pessimists that there was no God and this pessimism 
had led him almost to suicide, but he again subjected the 
arguments of Kant and Schopenhauer to dispassionate 
reasoning as simple as the watch-argument of causation 
formulated by Paley; he created for himself a Creator and 
as soon as he had admitted this premise he found that 
joy in life once more began to flow m his soul. But he 



TOLSTOI AND MUSIC 261 

could not desist from questioning and doubt. He tried 
to imagine God — in accordance with the Orthodox doc- 
trine — as a Trinity, but he found that nothing remained : 
the spring of life dried up, the tide of joy ebbed; again 
despair suggested suicide. He declared that not merely 
tens of times but hundreds of times he reached these 
conditions of joy and animation, followed by despair and 
the thought of suicide. 

The fact that whenever he thought of God his life 
seemed renewed suggested to him that to seek God was to 
live. Then came the process of seeking God, and this ex- 
plains why he so suddenly after years of neglect took up the 
habit of attending church services. He could at least 
do as the simple laboring people of Russia did. They 
accepted the sacraments, the fasts, the adoration of 
relics and ikons; he as a member of that great congre- 
gation could do the same. 

At first his reason did not revolt; he accepted every- 
thing, attended services, knelt, prayed, fasted, received 
the eucharist. But it soon seemed to him a mockery 
and the explanations of the theological writers, instead of 
making these rites reasonable, seemed full of sophistries. 
The limit came when, having humbled his intellect, sub- 
mitted to the old tradition, united himself with his Ortho- 
dox ancestors, confessed to a simple timid country 
clergyman, he was compelled to assert that he was about to 
swallow the flesh and blood of Christ. He did it once, 
with a pain in his heart, without any blasphemous feel- 
ings; but he could not bring himself to make the experi- 
ment a second time. 

The truth interwoven with the falsehood grew more 
and more unsatisfactory to him. He envied the illiterate 
who could accept without seeing absurdities. But he 
was not illiterate and it was no lasting alleviation of his 
dubiety to say to himself that it was his fault. He could 
not be satisfied with lying to himself or even shutting the 
eyes of his intellect. 



262 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

When questions of life arose the Church answered them 
contrary to what his inmost soul knew was right. One 
question was why the various branches of the Church 
Universal regarded one another as heretics and instead 
of meeting in love manifested hatred, their faith destroying 
truth and love. No dignitary of the Church approved 
of union even on points on which all could agree; all 
regarded it as the highest duty to preserve in perfect 
purity the Orthodox faith inherited from the fathers. 

Love was the chief tenet of the Church; yet during the 
Turko-Russian war and during the revolutionary dis- 
turbances that followed, the Church dignitaries from the 
highest to the lowest prayed for the success of Russian 
arms, thus making murder a virtue and the killing of 
helpless young reformers a duty. This seemed to Tolstoi 
a horrible thing. 

He had found enough in the Church teachings to con- 
vince him that there was an element of truth in them. 
He could no longer declare it to be all false. But there 
was equally an evident element of falsehood in them. 
He must separate the true from the false, and the only way 
to do so was to subject to a thorough examination the 
writings which the Church had handed down and on 
which the Church was built. 

His " Confession " ended with the statement that he 
was setting to work on the task of disentangling the false 
from the true. 

As might be supposed, "My Confession" (Ispovyed) 
failed to satisfy the censor and was forbidden in Russia. 
It was circulated in lithograph copies, or copies printed 
abroad were smuggled into the country. 

Alekseyefa, a professed infidel, at first somewhat 
alarmed at becoming a tutor in a count's house, soon 
found that Tolstoi was affability itself and ventured to 
express his surprise that a man of his culture, intellect 
and sincerity should go to church, repeat prayers and 
observe the Church rites. His answer showed how he 



TOLSTOI AND MUSIC 263 

was striving to convince himself. The setting sun was 
pouring through the frosty panes. He called Alekseyef 's 
attention to the tracery lighted by the sun and said that 
they could see only the sun's reflection but they knew 
that somewhere far off was the real sun, the source of 
light that produced the image they could see. So while 
the common people saw only the reflection in religion he 
was able to look a little farther and find beyond it the 
source of that light. Communion was possible, though 
he might be able to penetrate to a greater depth. But 
Alekseyef saw very evident signs that this self-deception 
was soon to fall completely away. He pointed out to 
Tolstoi the New Testament passages that seemed to 
uphold socialism. 



IX 

CHANGING VIEWS 

Early in June, 1878, Tolstoi began once more to keep 
his diary, which he had discontinued in October, 1865, 
and he was enabled to say, in the very first entry, that 
he could find a meaning in the whole service of Sunday 
Mass except the blasphemy about vanquishing enemies. 
His love of nature seemed to grow more and more intense. 
A description of his walk one June day through the rich, 
tall grass reminds one of Thoreau. He is intoxicated 
with the odors of the wood-paths. He watches a bee 
gathering honey from one after another of a cluster of 
yellow flowers and from the thirteenth it flies away, 
humming, with its load complete. 

While he was writing his " Confession " he was reading 
Renan's "Life of Jesus," which he considered childish, 
trivial and contemptible; he could find almost nothing 
original in it. He compared Renan to a man who, 
having extracted all the gold contained in a pile of 
sand, instead of being satisfied with the gold, sets to 
work with a great air of wisdom to rediscover the sand, 
and on failing to find it declares that it must have been 
there. The historical details which Renan, so to speak, 
re-created did not seem to help Tolstoi at all in under- 
standing the character of Jesus nor in fact did it seem to 
help him to realize that Jesus was a living man. He was 
after the absolute truth, and that he found in the Gospels 
themselves. 

That explains why in his next writings — "The Cri- 
tique of Dogmatic Theology" and "The Four Gospels 
Harmonized and Translated" — he shocked other com- 

264 



CHANGING VIEWS 265 

mentators by simply leaving out whatever he did not 
understand or whatever seemed to him incompatible with 
the truth as he understood it. Because it was in the books 
was no reason for his accepting anything: it must be tested 
by the Law of Reason. This certainly furnishes one 
more, and perhaps the most striking, among a thousand 
examples of the phenomenon of men finding what they 
want to find in the Scriptures. By the same principle one 
could follow the " Wicked Bible" and omit the not from 
the Ten Commandments. 

But Tolstoi was serious and sincere in his search for the 
truth, and having as he thought found it, made it the 
rule of his life, consistent to the end and in the end most 
consistent. 

It may be very easily imagined how troubled the 
countess was by this tremendous obsession. She wrote 
that he was buried in his books, convinced that what he 
was about to write would be very important. 

In June he followed the custom of many of the Russian 
peasants and made the pious pilgrimage to the holy city 
of Kief. The pilgrim road that led to the catacomb- 
monastery was only a short walk from his house and it 
had been a favorite occupation with him to go down to it 
and engage the pilgrims in conversation, often hearing 
wonderful tales in the vivid staccato " folk-language" 
which every Russian from Pushkin down finds so rich in 
new words and phrases. At Kief he went about among 
the monks and pilgrims but got almost nothing that 
helped his inquiries. He wrote his wife that his expe- 
dition was a failure. He also went to Samara and there 
engaged in an interesting talk about faith with the 
Starovyeerui or Old Believers, peasants and tradesmen, 
very simple, wise, decent* serious men who dispensed 
with priests. 

In his diary he makes an interesting comparison of 
himself with other men. There were strong men like 
Napoleon among the heavy, wingless people, whose sphere 



266 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

was -down below and who left terrible traces and caused 
a tumult among their fellow-men. There were the monks 
whose wings enabled them to rise and fly. There were 
good idealists who easily rise from among the throng 
and no less easily descend. There were strong-winged 
men who like himself were drawn by carnal desires, who 
shattered their wings and after fluttering vainly fell. " If 
my wings are mended, I will fly high/' he said. Then 
there were those who, like Christ, had heavenly wings 
and voluntarily, out of love to mankind, folded their wings 
and descended to earth to teach others to fly. When they 
were no more needed they flew away. 

Alekseyef tells how Tolstoi abandoned fasting. The 
doctors had advised it on account of his health and he, 
wishing to be obedient to the Church, went to the famous 
Troitsa or Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius, north of 
Moscow, and obtained leave of the monk Leonid. 

The countess, says Alekseyef, observed the fasts 
strictly and when she perceived her husband was wavering 
she saw to it that every one in the house fasted strictly 
with the exception of the two tutors: for them she 
ordered meat to be cooked. One day the two men had 
cutlets and after they had helped themselves the butler 
left the dish on the window-sill. Tolstoi', seeing them 
there, asked his son to bring him one; he ate the meat 
with good appetite and gave up fasting from that day 
forth. 

The countess naturally could not understand his 
behavior. She had noticed the year before that his eyes 
were fixed and strange, that he hardly talked at all, and 
was positively unable to think about everyday affairs. 
After he had got fairly to work she wrote her sister, 
Tatyana Kuzminskaya, complaining that he was engaged 
in some sort of religious discussion, reading and thinking 
until his head ached and all to prove that the Church 
and the Gospel teachings were incompatible. She 
declared that not ten people in Russia would be interested 



CHANGING VIEWS 267 

in this work and expressed a devout wish that it might 
soon be done with and pass like an illness. No one on 
earth, she declared, could control him and she did not 
think that he could control himself. 

About a month later their tenth child was born; three 
had already died in infancy. The house was full of 
company a good deal of the time. In September of that 
year Tolstoi wrote Fyet that they had been having 
private theatricals and at one time thirty guests sat down 
to dinner and all the devils were let loose. Many people 
were attracted to Yasnaya Polyana by his growing fame; 
but he refused to receive General Skdbelyef, the con- 
queror of Plevna, and later he was for similar reasons 
unwilling to make the acquaintance of the great painter 
Vereshchagin who after the manner of the Greek painter 
Parrhasius requested to have two Turkish criminals 
hanged a little sooner so that he might make a sketch of 
their execution. 

The poet Pushkin was born on the sixth of June, 1799, 
and when in commemoration of his eightieth birthday a 
monument was unveiled at Moscow, it was desired that 
Tolstoi should take an active part in the ceremonies. 
Turgenief returned from France enthusiastic in this 
movement, and he was besought to use his influence to 
persuade Tolstoi to be present. Turgenief visited 
Yasnaya Polyana. A woodcock shooting was arranged 
specially in his honor, and as Turgenief and the countess 
stood watching for the birds she asked him why it had 
been so long since he had written a book. He replied 
that every time he had planned anything he had been 
shaken by the fever of love. Now he was old and could 
neither love nor write. He also told Tolstoi' that he had 
found his last love-affair dull and Tolstoi exclaimed that 
he wished he were like that! 

When they got back to the house Turgenief read to the 
company, which had been increased by the arrival of 
Prince L. D. Urusof, vice-governor of Tula, one of his 



268 . THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

poems in prose, entitled "The Dog." Tolstoi' had 
conceived the idea of writing poems in prose, had tried 
the experiment and sent one to Aksakof, editor of Rus y 
signing it with an assumed name. It was declined on 
the ground that the author was not as yet enough of an 
adept in writing. Tolstoi accordingly suggested the idea 
to Turgenief, who published a volume containing a 
number of them, under the title, "Senilia." 

Neither Tolstoi nor Urusof approved of Turgenief s 
attitude toward death as manifested in "The Dog," and a 
lively discussion soon arose regarding the need of a 
religious outlook. Urusof became excited and tipped his 
chair on its two front legs. They slipped and down he 
went on the floor. That was an episode which did not 
affect his argument, and he went on, still pointing his 
finger at Turgenief, till he was recalled to himself by a 
roar of laughter. He resumed his seat and went on, still 
oblivious to the absurdity of the situation. 

Tolstoi refused to join in the ovation to Pushkin's 
memory. The reason for his attitude was that Pushkin 
was a man of questionable morals, who had been killed 
in a duel, and that all his services consisted in writing 
verses about love, verses frequently indecent. The 
two novelists had such a hot dispute about the matter 
that they did not notice the dinner-bell. The countess 
found them in a hut which Tolstoi had built among the 
old oaks "in order to have solitude in summer for his 
work and to escape from flies, children and visitors." 
They parted amicably enough, but Turgenief advised Dos- 
toyevsky, who had returned from his long exile and 
wanted to make Tolstoi's acquaintance, not to expose him- 
self to the moods of the man whom they both admired. 

Turgenief could not understand Tolstoi's attitude. He 
expressed the deepest pity for him and felt it an unpar- 
donable sin that he should have ceased writing. He 
wrote his friend Polonsky that Tolstoi could be extraor- 
dinarily useful and yet he had plunged into mysticism. 




Ivan Turgenief. 

By courtesy of the Macmillan Company. 



CHANGING VIEWS 269 

"I am considered an artist, " he said, "but what am I 
worth when compared to him? He has no equal in 
European literature. Whatever he seizes upon becomes 
alive under his pen." His creative power he thought 
was amazing, whether it were devoted to describing a 
whole historical epoch as in "War and Peace" or to depict- 
ing a peasant with a purely Russian soul. Every person, 
every animal he described was instantly made vital, and 
yet he had given it all up and surrounded himself with 
Bibles and Gospels in nearly all languages and had written 
a whole chestful of mystical ethics which he insisted 
were the real thing. 

Not all his friends failed to see the value of what he 
was doing. Strakhof was carried away by his new 
theories and felt that his explanation of the Gospels 
had striking simplicity and acuteness; he deemed the 
contents of his new book truly magnificent. Strakhof 
was one of the few who utterly refused to quarrel with 
him and who preserved his friendship unbroken. 



PART IV 

THE THEOLOGIAN 

. I 
THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 

The new book which Tolstoi mentioned as occupying 
him was probably the " Critique of Dogmatic Theology," 
which he finished that year. It was an examination of the 
dogmas of the Orthodox Greek Church, and he came to 
the conclusion that they and the whole system of theology 
as presented, for instance, in the treatises of the Metropoli- 
tan of Moscow, were false. He charged the Church with 
a lack of intellectual integrity and its influence with being 
a monstrous obstacle to man's moral progress. Science 
has taught there is no up or down in the Universe and the 
statement that a Moses or a Christ went to a hill-top and 
mounted into heaven is impossible to astronomy. Con- 
sequently to repeat the words of the Creed, "He ascended 
into heaven, " is to talk nonsense. In other words faith 
is the antithesis of credulity and superstition. 

To uphold such a theology required the strong and 
tyrannic power of the secular " armed hand." He 
pointed out that one will not find in the Gospels them- 
selves any of the dogmas supported by the Church — 
Adam's Fall, the triuneness of God, the Atonement and 
the identification of Jesus with the Divinity. But Christ 
taught love and pity and the duty of man to his fellow- 
man and to his heavenly Father. 

In the same way he analyzed the Scriptures themselves, 

270 



THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 271 

and he found that the theologians had slyly interpolated 
many words and phrases into the translations in order to 
make the texts bear out meanings which they desired to 
find. The Old Testament was an anthology of Hebrew 
literature and contained much that was crude, primitive, 
useless and immoral; and the New Testament contained 
the writings of Paul, who was responsible for the Church 
allying itself with a tyrannic State. When Paul said, 
"The powers that be are ordained of God," Tolstoi de- 
manded an answer to his question, " What powers ? Those 
of the rebel Pugatchof or those of the Empress Katha- 
rine II. ?" 

Advancing from destructive to constructive theology, 
Tolstoi discovered five commandments which seemed to 
him a sufficient guide for life: 

The first forbids a man to be angry with his brother. 

The second forbids a man to lust after a woman. 

The third is, " Swear not at all," lest you give away 
the control of your future action. 

The fourth is, " Resist not him that is evil; " that is, use 
no physical violence against any man. This law involves 
the abolition of all law courts, police, prisons, armies. 

The fifth is, "Love your enemies;" this puts an end 
to patriotism and the frontiers of alien states. 

Complex modern life according to Tolstoi would be 
reduced to absolute simplicity if only we could sum up 
those five commandments with all they involve into the 
one rule of life — the Golden Rule — "Do unto others as 
you would have others do unto you." 

Theoretically all Christians believe in that rule; but 
until all men follow it the world is likely to go on in 
its slow development; and even if there were another 
Noah's flood, the lines of heredity would cause the birth 
into the renewed w r orld of men and women whose conduct 
would make it hard to follow. Theoretically it is a 
perfect rule, and theoretically Tolstoi's theology is as 
simple and plausible as Christ's. 



272 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

It was to be expected that he would subject to the same 
strict reasoning the Bible miracles — reject some and ex- 
plain others away. As for immortality, it is plain that he 
at one time disbelieved in a personal life after death ; but 
as he grew older he came to the conclusion that it was 
inconceivable that he should be a part of the infinite in 
this life and not continue to exist after bodily death. In 
that respect, however, he was an agnostic, He had long 
ceased to take any interest in table-tippings and the 
manifestations of spiritism. 

Man's life on earth is the most interesting thing to man 
and one can hardly sympathize with those who feel that 
Tolstoi in diverting his mental powers from merely artistic 
fiction to a study of the greatest things of life was wasting 
his intellect. One may not agree with his conclusions — 
it depends on whether his premises are satisfactory — but 
his attempt to formulate a theory of life and still more his 
sincere attempt to guide his life by it, is the most interest- 
ing phenomenon of modern religious history — especially 
because it was worked out in a country like Russia, where 
the expression of thought running counter to prevailing 
systems was less free than almost anywhere else in the 
world. The Franklin of theology held his knuckle to 
the key of his high-flying kite, and it was almost a miracle 
that the discharge did not annihilate him. 

He was completely absorbed in his studies, but the 
enlightenment that flooded his soul and rejoiced him at 
finding what seemed to him the truth or the right path to 
the truth made the physical disabilities which alarmed his 
wife of no consequence. His wife and all conventional 
admirers thought that he was wasting his time; but at 
the risk of subjecting himself to the hackneyed aphorism 
that an author is always mistaken in his appreciation of 
his own works, he persisted ever after in saying that his 
"Four Gospels" was a thousand times more important 
than all else that he had written. He knew that he was 
not mistaken, because it cost him the greatest and joyful- 



THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 273 

est labor, was the turning-point of his whole life and 
served as the basis of all that he wrote afterward. 

And yet as time went on and he studied into other 
religions it gradually came about that, while he still 
believed the Gospels to contain essential truth and felt 
that his interpretation of the teachings of Jesus was cor- 
rect, he attached less and less importance to the personality 
of Jesus and was convinced that the probability against 
the actual existence of Christ was as strong as for it; 
the moral teaching of goodness was left as impregnable 
as ever, since it flowed from the whole spiritual life of 
humanity. 

He was not so oblivious of practical affairs as the 
countess said. The former serfs of a neighboring pro- 
prietor claimed that they were being cheated out of a lot 
of land that was rightfully theirs. Tolstoi went to their 
aid, and after considerable effort won their case. They 
were so grateful that they got in his hay and reaped his 
grain for him; and he was so pleased with their gratitude 
that he paid them wages and extra wages at that, top- 
ping them off with a good dinner and plenty of vodka. 
Later he would have omitted the liquor. 

Once when Prince Urusof had come from Tula to 
spend a winter Sunday with Tolstoi, the two men and 
Tolstoi's three sons went out for a walk. They found a 
frozen man in the snow. A sledge and fur-coat were sent 
for from the house and everything was done to revive 
the man. He was dead. Tolstoi had a coffin made and 
a grave dug; he and Urusof hired a priest to read the 
burial service, sharing all the expenses. 

But he certainly neglected what in Russia is called the 
khozyatstvo, and it is not strange that the countess, seeing 
that the income from his estates, left to the control of not 
altogether trustworthy stewards, was falling into arrears, 
should have assumed the care of them. 

Alexander II. was assassinated in Petersburg on 
the thirteenth of March, 1881. Shortly afterward, while 



274 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

thinking about the execution of the conspirators, one of 
whom was Sophia Perovskaya, daughter of the Governor- 
general of Petersburg and niece of the Minister of Educa- 
tion, Tolstoi lay down on his leather divan and fell asleep. 
He dreamed or imagined that he dreamed that he was 
being executed, and not they, and yet that he was executing 
them — not Alexander III., the judges and the hangmen. 
He awoke in a sort of nightmare and wrote a letter to the 
Emperor. He afterward told the young Jew Feinermann 
that the thought of the Emperor's allowing the execution 
of the five accomplices "in that really terrible, shocking, 
and inhuman deed" prevented him from sleeping; he 
could not rest anywhere. He thought of going to Peters- 
burg and imploring the Tsar face to face, as men used to 
do in olden times, not to let the execution take place. 
But instead of doing that, weakness caused him to 
act in the modern way; he wrote a letter in which, 
though he tried to pour out his whole soul, he says he did 
not express anything like what he felt. 

The letter began with an apology that he, an insignifi- 
cant, weak, and worthless man, should take upon himself 
to advise the Russian Emperor how to act in complicated 
and difficult circumstances. 

He wrote not "with flowers of false and fulsome 
eloquence," but as man to man. He pointed out that the 
late Emperor, " a kind man who had done much good and 
had always wished his people well," had been brutally 
mutilated and slain, not by personal enemies, but by 
enemies of the existing order. 

According to Christ's teaching it was the Tsar's 
duty to forgive these enemies, even though they were 
likely for the sake of what they considered the general 
good to seek to kill him also. 

Twenty years before, he went on to say, a group of 
young people was formed who hated the existing order 
of things and the government. They tried by all sorts 
of godless and inhuman methods, by incendiary fires, 



THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 275 

robberies, and assassinations, to destroy the existing 
order of society; the governmental struggle with this 
terrorist group, instead of diminishing it, made it grow 
larger. It was a plague, of course, since it was harmful 
to the life of the State, and two methods of treating it had 
been employed. The method of surgery had been tried 
and failed. Liberal measures — partial freedom, modera- 
tion in penalties, a constitution — intended to satisfy the 
discontented had been proposed, and these, according to 
Tolstoi, had also failed. 

But the third and scriptural method had not been 
tried. The Emperor stood at the parting of the ways — 
he could wreak vengeance for the evil by cruel execu- 
tions, he could summon a parliament, but both were 
paths that would lead nowhere. The new Tsar was as 
yet guiltless of blood, he was the innocent victim of his 
position. If he executed the criminals, he would uproot 
three or four out of hundreds; their places would be 
taken by dozens of others; whereas if he should return 
good for evil, should pardon the malefactors, give them 
money, and let them depart from Russia on the ground 
that the Bible says, "Love your enemies," thousands 
and millions of hearts would quiver with joy, and he, 
the writer, would be his dog and his slave, weeping with 
emotion every time he heard his name. 

To kill and to destroy the Revolutionists were not to 
struggle against them; that had to be done by opposing 
to their ideal one that was superior to theirs and included 
it — the only ideal that did that was the ideal of love, 
forgiveness, and returning good for evil. 

One word of forgiveness and of Christian love, spoken 
and emanating from the throne, would destroy the evil 
that was corroding Russia. "As wax in the fire all 
Revolutionary conflict would melt away in presence of 
the man-Tsar fulfilling the law of Christ." 

Tolstoi gave his letter to Strakhof to deliver to Pobye- 
donostsef, Ober-Prokuror of the Holy Synod, who, 



276 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

having been the tutor of Alexander III., had influence 
with him. Tolstoi* also wrote a personal appeal to 
Pobyedonostsef, but that autocratic personage refused to 
have anything to do with it. Strakhof then put it into 
the hands of Professor Konstantin Bestuzhef-Riumin, 
through whom it ultimately reached the Emperor. Alex- 
ander III. sent word informally to Tolstoi' that he would 
have pardoned the conspirators if their attack had been 
made on him, but he did not feel that it was right to 
pardon the murderers of his father. 

Pobyedonostsef, after the conspirators had been hanged, 
answered Tolstoi's personal letter. After apologizing 
for the delay, which had occurred not from discourtesy 
or indifference, he said, but from the impossibility of 
getting his bearings amid the overwhelming occupations 
and confusion that had followed the events of March 13, 
he begged him not to be offended because he avoided 
handing the letter to the Emperor. In such an important 
matter, he said, one must act in accordance with one's 
belief: "After reading your letter I saw that your belief 
was one; and mine and that of the Church was another, 
and that our Christ is not your Christ. Mine I know as a 
man of strength and truth, healing the weak, but in yours 
I thought that I discerned the features of one weak and 
himself needing to be cured." 

Tolstoi might have inquired with righteous indignation 
if it were possible to think of the Christ of the Gospels 
signing the death-warrant of his murderers! So far had 
the heads of the Qhurch of Christ departed from the 
ideal which he gave when he said, " Forgive them, for 
they know not what they do!" 

Surely it is the greatest tragi-comedy of the world that 
Christians almost universally, while pretending to follow 
Christ, when it comes to following him in practice, declare 
that it is impracticable. Thus urged Fyet and the 
countess, in a long discussion lasting several days in 
early June, 1881. "The Christian teaching is not 



THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 277 

practicable/' said they. "Then it is stupid, is it ?" "No, 
but not practicable.'' "But have you tried to practice it ?" 
"No, but it is not practicable." Thus Tolstoi summed 
up in his diary the talk with Fyet and his wife. 

His wife acknowledged that he was a leader in these 
matters. " He goes ahead of the crowd," she would say, 
"pointing the way men should go. But I am the crowd. 
I live in its current. ... I am held by it and by my 
environment and habits. . . . He is quite right, but 
I cannot do what he demands. Five centuries hence 
men will tread in the path in which he is the pioneer!" 

His friend Samarin came and with a smile insisted 
that the terrorists deserved to be hanged. "Didn't 
Christ say that they who used the sword should perish 
by the sword?" — And Tolstoi records that he had 
great difficulty in refraining from pitching him out of 
the house by the scruff of the neck! 



II 

A PILGRIMAGE 

In June Tolstoi went to the Optin Monastery a second 
time, taking as a fellow-pilgrim his servant Arbuzof and 
a purse filled with coins to distribute to beggars. It 
must have been a wretched journey. Tolstoi's feet were 
soon blistered by the rough bast shoes which he wore, and 
he had to make the concession to his comfort of exchang- 
ing them for hemp shoes. They slept wherever any one 
would take them in. At one large village they stayed 
with the village starosta, whom they found cheating his 
own peasants as he paid them for making bricks. Tol- 
stoi interfered and the elder became violent ; but when his 
son appeared and discovered from the stranger's passport 
that it was Harun al-Rashid with his vizier, he disappeared 
together with all the peasants and the vodka that they had 
brought. The elder's wife offered the count her own bed, 
but he declined the courtesy and slept on the floor. In 
the morning they had tea and breakfast, and the old 
woman refused payment, which Tolstoi insisted on mak- 
ing, though he accompanied it by a warning to the son 
that his father's behavior would lead to bad results. 

That day they were caught in a thunder shower and 
were wet through. Tolstoi was seized with severe pains 
and lay down in his wet clothes on the wet ground, ex- 
claiming that he was at death's door. The owner of a hut 
refused them admission and they had some difficulty in 
finding shelter. After five days they reached the monas- 
tery and were so travel-stained that they were not allowed 
to enter the respectable refectory, but were relegated to 
the room where the dirtiest and raggedest tramps were 
accommodated. 

278 



A PILGRIMAGE 279 

Tolstoi, who was taking a certain pride as he expressed 
it in being in his own eyes and in the eyes of others only 
what he was and not what he was plus his belongings, 
accepted the fellowship of his filthy neighbors, eating 
with relish what was set before him and drinking the 
cheap kvas. They were lodged for the night in the com- 
mon dormitory, swarming with tramps and other vermin. 
That was too much for Arbuzof. He bribed the monk 
with a ruble to give them a private room. There was a 
third lodger — a cobbler, a man quite after Tolstoi's own 
heart, only he snored. Tolstoi slept on a divan, the 
cobbler on another, Arbuzof lay on the floor near the 
count. By and by Tolstoi found he could stand the 
snoring no longer and told Arbuzof to wake him. Arbu- 
zof shook him and said: — 

" My good fellow, you snore very loud and disturb my 
old man. It alarms him to have some one snoring in the 
same room with him." 

The cobbler was quite indignant at having his rights 
infringed, but he made no more noise. 

The next day, while Arbuzof went to mass, Tolstoi 
occupied himself in watching the monks as they mowed, 
plowed, and did their other work. At the monastery 
book-shop he found an old woman trying to secure a copy 
of the Gospels for her son. The monk told her it was not 
a suitable book for such as she and urged her to take 
instead a description of the monastery and the miracles 
performed by the Saints. Tolstoi paid a ruble and a 
half for a copy of the Gospels and gave it to her, telling 
her to read it and let her son read it. 

The monk hastened to inform the archimandrite that 
a man dressed like a pauper was spending money like 
w r ater. The archimandrite sent a monk to investigate; 
the monk happened to be from Yasnaya Polyana and of 
course recognized Tolstoi. Harun al-Rashid's disguise 
was henceforth in vain. He bade Arbuzof give him his 
boots and a clean blouse and went to see the archiman- 



2 8o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

drite and Father Ambrosy. Perforce he had to go and 
lodge in a room upholstered in velvet. Nothing was too 
good for him. He had a strenuous four hours' talk with 
Father Ambrosy, whom, according to Arbuzof, he declared 
to be a quite holy man who made him really feel the 
nearness of God. 

His diary on his return chronicles his endeavors to 
keep consistent and to press forward in his new path. 
He was troubled with insomnia and indigestion and 
found it difficult yet not impossible to keep happy. He 
records a conversation with his son Seryozha, in which 
the youth upheld the advantages of agnosticism. 

Tolstoi thought it showed ignorance, and not wisdom and 
education. Agnosticism applied to astronomy would be 
equally foolish. You cannot see the axes on which the 
earth and the planets turn or the ecliptics on which they 
move, and you do see the sun and stars move. Proofs of 
these theories are difficult, but " the advantage is that the 
universe is brought into unison. So it is with the moral 
and spiritual matters: the great thing is to bring into 
unison the questions, What is to be done ? What is to 
be known ? and, What is to be hoped for ? All humanity 
is striving to bring these into unison." 

The Church teaches theology which cannot stand the 
test of mature powers, and so men are left without unison, 
with disconnected knowledge. 

A formal dinner with champagne and his expensively 
dressed family revolted him. Outside were poor people 
tortured with overwork. There was a jolly picnic which 
Tolstoi joined but had not the strength to speak out his 
mind in protest. 

His illness continued, leaving him weak, indolent, and 
sad. He felt that activity was essential and its aims 
were : enlightenment which he might direct toward others, 
amendment toward himself, and unity with those who 
were enlightened and trying to amend. 



Ill 

ARGUMENTS RESULTING FROM DIVERGING VIEWS 

One of Count Tolstoi's brothers-in-law had begun the 
publication of a magazine for children, and in this ap- 
peared about this time the little tale, "What Men Live 
By," afterward collected with others of the same genre 
in a volume which some critics think superior to anything 
else that the great novelist ever wrote. Thus Carmen 
Sylva, Queen of Roumania, declared that they were 
the most perfect tales ever written, like Dante, Shake- 
speare, and the Bible destined to live through all time: 
"If Tolstoi' had written nothing else," she said, "he 
would rank among the greatest men of the world." 

Turgenief contributed his little story "The Quail" to 
the same magazine. He was then at Spasskoye and 
Tolstoi went to see him. He arrived a day sooner than 
he was expected, hired a conveyance from the station, 
the driver lost his way in the dark, and it was one o'clock 
at night when he reached the house. Polonsky, then a 
guest at the house, sat writing in his room. On hearing 
the tramp of horses' hoofs, he stepped out to see what it 
was. What he saw was a peasant in a blouse strapped 
with a leather belt. At first he did not recognize Tolstoi, 
whom he had not seen for twenty years. As Turgenief 
was still up, the three men at once engaged in a discussion 
which lasted till three in the morning. Turgenief be- 
came so excited that even his ears turned red, but Tolstoi 
was singularly gentle and winning. Polonsky said he 
seemed to be reborn, and though he maintained his views 
with firmness did not try to impose them on the others 
and listened quietly to Turgenief's objections. 

281 



282 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Tolstoi was pleased with Polonsky, a poor man, oc- 
cupied with art and literature, kindly sympathetic with 
others; while Turgenief seemed to him naively tranquil, 
living in luxury and idleness but fearing the name of 
God and acknowledging Him. 

From there he went again to his Samara estate, but 
what he had formerly enjoyed — the care and inspection 
of his live-stock — now seemed to him an unendurable 
occupation. He thought it all wrong that one man should 
have nearly fifty thousand desyatins, while that man's 
peasants should own only an average of one each; that 
the barin should be living in luxury while muzhiks were 
starving. 

He wrote his wife that the prospects of the harvest 
were excellent and that they ought to help the many poor 
in the neighboring villages. She replied somewhat per- 
emptorily: "Let the management of the estate go on as 
has been arranged. I want nothing altered. There may 
be losses — we have learned to be used to them; but even 
if there are large profits, the money will not reach me and 
the children when it is given away. You know my opin- 
ion about helping the poor; we cannot feed thousands of 
the poor inhabitants of Samara and other places." 

The practical assistance required in some c6ncrete 
case she did approve of rendering — where they knew of a 
given person lacking corn or a horse or a cow or a hut. 
"We must furnish those things at once," she wrote, 
"because we feel sorry for them and because it ought to 
be done. " 

He wrote his wife that he had been seeing a good deal 
of the Molokans, whom he found most interesting. He 
had been to their prayer-meetings and taken part in their 
services. He had read to them some of the extracts from 
his manuscript in reply to their question how he under- 
stood things. The seriousness, alertness, and healthy 
common sense of those people, though they were only half- 
educated, amazed him. 




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DIVERGING VIEWS 283 

The kumys was beginning to have a good effect on his 
health and there was a corresponding effect on his views 
of life. He awoke to the fact that he had been giving 
his wife little or no help, that he had been neglectful of 
her. "I have been to blame, dushenka, unconsciously, 
involuntarily, thou knowest that, but still I have been to 
blame. " She was expecting soon to be confined again. 
He wrote her not to overtax her strength: "For heaven's 
sake and our love's sake," he wrote, "take care of your- 
self. Put off everything as much as you can till I return. 
I will gladly do everything and will take pains not to do 
it in the wrong way. " 

He told her that he still had the same thoughts and 
feelings but was cured of the delusion that others could 
and should see everything as he did. 

The countess thought he was tarrying too long at 
Samara; by doing so he missed a call from a nephew of 
his old hunting-friend Epishka. This Cossack had rid- 
den all the way from Starogladovsk to solicit some post 
from the Emperor, and stopped to renew acquaintance 
with the count. The countess had gathered from one of 
her husband's letters that he was feeling the inspiration 
to write what she called "something poetic," meaning a 
novel in contradistinction to controversial or philosophical 
books. She was delighted. She assured him that salva- 
tion and joy for them both lay in that. That, she said, 
was the real work for which he was born and the only 
kind of activity that would give peace to his soul. 

His diary notes the fact that every month a man was 
killed on the railway at Ryazhsk, and he shows his hatred 
of Progress as represented in machinery by consigning to 
the devil all machines if a man is to be sacrificed. 

Yet why ? Is death under an engine worse than by a 
stroke of lightning or by a lingering illness ? 

He had been living the simple life, a part of the time 
under the roof of a family where the members did most 
of their own work. He liked it but did not like the arti- 



284 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

ficial conditions, as they seemed to him, when he reached 
home. Private theatricals played by " empty people" 
seemed to kill his very soul. Turgenief came again in 
early September and danced a quadrille with the children, 
and then to amuse them took off his coat, stuck his fingers 
in his waistcoat, and performed a cancan as they danced 
it in Paris. He was very gay, praising everything and 
congratulating Tolstoi on having chosen such a wife! 
But Tolstoi did not approve of his actions. Three words 
expressed it in his diary: " Turgenief, cancan, sad." 

The countess felt that for her children's sake they must 
live a part of the year in Moscow. The oldest son was 
ready to enter the University ; the oldest daughter was to be 
introduced into society. They hired a house and re- 
moved to the city in the early autumn. The first month 
was to Tolstoi the most wretched of his life. He felt 
they were there, not for the sake of living, but to be like 
other people. The city to him represented "smells, stones, 
luxury, poverty, and vice." Society consisted of male- 
factors who, protected by the law, robbed the people, 
mustered soldiers, and indulged in unseemly orgies. The 
common people could get back only what belonged to 
them by ministering to the passions of their masters — 
by waxing their floors, massaging their bodies, and driving 
their horses! 

Troubled with insomnia and lack of appetite, he be- 
came depressed and fell into a kind of desperate apathy. 
He often actually wept. The countess was so troubled 
that she was in tears every day and lost flesh. It seemed 
to her that she should go mad. But after a while he 
made a visit to his old friends the Bakunins, in the Govern- 
ment of Tver, and when he returned he was in better 
spirits. 



IV 

SLUMMING IN MOSCOW 

During his absence he made the acquaintance of a 
sectarian Christian — a peasant named Sutayef, who may 
be regarded as the personification of Platon Karatayef in 
"War and Peace," and of Uncle Fokanuitch, the muzhik of 
whom Levin learned from Feodor that he lived for his 
soul and remembered God. Tolstoi heard of this peas- 
ant through his friend Prugavin. Almost in the same way 
as Levin started off down the road, unmindful of the heat 
or of his weariness, to find the Christian peasant who had 
solved the problem of life, so did Tolstoi hasten to Sutayef. 

Sutayef and his sons had been stone-cutters bu had 
ceased to make gravestones because they had come to 
the conclusion that competition was immoral. They 
refused to collect the money due them; they went back to 
the country and Sutayef became the village herdsman but 
would not use a whip on a horse. His sons were im- 
prisoned because they would not serve in the army;- they 
all abjured the Church and lived a sort of communal life. 
They conducted their weddings with a certain solemn 
simplicity which was not lacking in its spice of humor. 
Sutayef told Tolstoi that when his daughter was to be 
married, they all met in the evening, the father gave them 
some advice as to the way people ought to live: " Then we 
made their bed, put them to sleep together, put out the 
light, and that was the whole wedding." Such a man 
was after Tolstoi's own heart. 

Of course if all men were Sutayefs, serious, conscien- 
tious, fearless, industrious, frugal, the world would go on 
better than it does when many elaborate church weddings 
serve only as a cachet of the worst immorality. 

285 



286 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Sutayef started to drive Tolstoi back to the Bakunins, 
and on the way they let the horse take his own gait. 
He upset their cart and tumbled the two men into a ravine : 
they were discussing the approach of the Kingdom of 
Heaven. 

Tolstoi was already contemplating his plan of getting 
rid of his property. He had come to the conclusion 
that from money hardly anything but evil could come. 
A plan which had entered his mind of collecting what 
was owed him and founding an institution for the service 
of man now seemed to him worse than nonsense — evil 
vanity. Had it not been for his family he would 
even then have given away all that he had, not for the 
sake of doing good but to be less blameworthy. Yet he 
recognized that his family and the ties of life were so 
interwoven into his very nature that he could not wholly 
clear himself from the temptations that assailed him. 

On his return to Moscow he found the conditions of 
city life almost as hard as before. The mass of evil 
amid which people lived oppressed him and he hardly 
knew what outlet there was between letting his hands 
drop and suffering passively or making a compromise with 
evil, befogging his soul with cards and idle talk and bustle. 
The only outlet seemed to be preaching with tongue and 
pen; even these activities had their own special temptations 
in the way of vanity, pride, and self-deception. To help 
poor people was another way; but the immense number of 
unfortunates was prohibitive. He was making up his 
mind that the best way was to live a good life, turning a 
kindly side to all men; but his fiery nature caused him 
to get angry and indignant and lose control of himself. 

He found a congenial spirit in Nikolai' Fyodorovitch 
Fy6dorof, the librarian of the Rumyantsof Museum, who 
was sixty years old, a bright and gentle exponent of 
Christian teaching, who had made it a habit to give away 
everything he had. Fyddorof afterward became very 



SLUMMING IN MOSCOW 287 

bitter against Tolstoi because the count could not 
accept views which he considered essential. 

Tolstoi' became intimate also with a teacher in a rail- 
way school, a very ascetic man by the name of Orldf, 
who had been two years in prison on account of his 
political activities. He and Fyodorof read with approval 
Tolstoi's " Gospel in Brief" — a summary of Tolstoi's 
work on the Gospels compiled by an enthusiastic tutor 
from the various chapters, without the text-translation. 

In the privacy of his work-room he was writing stories 
in which he tried to express his ideas, and for exercise he 
was in the habit of going across the Dyevitchye Polye and 
across the Moskva River to the Vorobydvui Hills, to saw 
and split wood with two peasants who, it seemed to him, 
gave him an insight into real life. 

Every evening he mingled with the company that filled 
his house; he found the people interesting but frivolous. 

Another son was born in December of this year, and w r as 
christened Aleksei. A visitor who about this time saw 
the countess described her as a very fine woman, with a 
handsome face and a pleasant voice. She had a light 
step and was tastefully gowned. He was amused be- 
cause the countess came into the room where Tolstoi 
was sitting in his shirt-sleeves and jokingly reproached 
him for such unconventionality. Tolstoi' without resum- 
ing his coat remarked that it was too hot in the room. 
His answer seemed to put the countess out of countenance. 

In February of the year 1882 the decennial census was 
taken in Moscow, and this seemed to Tolstoi to offer an 
excellent opportunity to make a scientific inquiry into 
the cause of the terrible destitution that prevailed in that 
as in most cities. He wrote an appeal to the two thou- 
sand or more students who were to be enlisted in that work 
to formulate some organized relief. He read it before the 
City Duma and brought it to the notice of many wealthy 
people, but his plan was everywhere regarded as wholly 
impracticable and afterward he himself poured out the 



288 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

vials of his scorn on it. It was published in a newspaper, 
but it contained characteristic passages, as, for instance, 
the paragraph where he declares that money is an evil and 
therefore he who gives money does evil, — the delusion 
that it is good to give money arising from the fact that 
when a man does good he rids himself of evil, that is, of 
money. Striking also was his call to the people to com- 
bine in such helpfulness that there should not be in 
Moscow one person lacking clothes or food or one who 
could be sold for money, not one unfortunate, crushed 
by fate, not knowing where to find fraternal aid. It 
seemed to him wonderful that all these terrible condi- 
tions should exist along with a superfluity of wealth and 
that Christian men and women aware of them could live 
happily. 

Out of that article and his experiences in investigating 
the poverty ^f Moscow grew his book, "Tak Tcho zhe Nam 
Dyelat"— "What Must be Done?" or "What Is to be 
Done, Then?" — which contains wonderful passages de- 
scriptive of his experiences with beggars and cheats and 
all the flotsam and jetsam of a great city. It was pub- 
lished in 1886. 

At his own request he was appointed one of the census- 
takers and was allotted one of the worst districts in the 
whole city. It made him more than ever ashamed to go 
to his own home and in luxurious rooms eat a five-course 
dinner served by two butlers in evening dress, with white 
ties and white gloves; it seemed to him more than ever 
that the existence of all the wealthy people, overfeeding 
themselves on sturgeon and beef-steak and surrounding 
themselves with luxuries, was a crime. Though his wife 
and other friendly people urged convincingly that the 
existence of these unfortunates was no justification for 
spoiling the happiness of the people of his own circle, 
still the remembrance of the horrors of poverty that he 
had seen forever took away from him all satisfaction in 
his own drawing-room and in others of the same kind, and 




Gay's Portrait of Count Tolstoi. 

Moscow, 1884. 



SLUMMING IN MOSCOW 289 

made the sight of clean, elegantly laid tables, carriages 
with portly coachmen and horses, and the shops, theaters, 
and ball-rooms of the city distasteful to him. 

Yet his experiences taught him that the majority 
of the unfortunates whom he saw could not be assisted 
with money; each individual case required time and 
care. The task was hopeless. They could not be cured 
by any external means, only by an internal change. Even 
in the lowest of them he saw only a slightly varied 
replica of himself. 

He had attempted to raise a fund to help these suffering 
poor. He had asked wealthy people to help him. 
Three thousand rubles or so were promised, but none of 
it was forthcoming; though any of those w r ealthy people 
w r ould have paid a fancy price in advance to see Sarah 
Bernhardt, who happened to be in Moscow at that time. 
Some of his student helpers contributed their wages; 
he gave the twenty-five rubles granted him for his ser- 
vices by the City Duma; but when he attempted to dis- 
tribute the little sum, he found it an impossibility to do 
it wisely. 



NEW ACQUAINTANCES 

At that time Tolstoi had not discovered why charity 
was vain; afterward, largely through the teaching of 
Sutayef , who came to stay with him, his eyes were opened 
to the fact (as he now knew) that all these wrecks of hu- 
manity were trying to imitate men like himself who lived 
on the work of others and did not work themselves. 

"What Is to be Done, Then?" ought to be read by all 
charity- workers. It is a most tremendous arraign- 
ment of modern civilization and culture; and even if its 
reasoning seem extreme, it is as interesting as a novel, 
for it is a novelist's note-book of life in dark places, the 
life of our fellow-men for whose condition not they 
themselves are responsible, but the society which puts 
them there and keeps them there. 

Nikolai Kashkin, Professor of the Theory of Music at 
the Moscow Conservatory, happened to call at the home 
of the Tolstois one evening when the demand for tickets 
for Bernhardt was at its height. Tolstoi indignantly 
related at the dinner-table how an aristocratic Moscow 
family made use of its acquaintance with the Governor- 
General of the city, Prince V. A. Dolgoruky, to secure a 
box on the ground floor, and then resold it at a large 
advance. Tolstoi' was highly excited about it and went 
on to give a regular lecture on the theater, utterly con- 
demning it and proving the falsity of dramatic art in 
general. 

When he had finished he asked Kashkin if he were 
going to see Bernhardt. Kashkin said " of course he was." 
Tolstoi' grew quite angry at his answer and even pounded 

290 



NEW ACQUAINTANCES 291 

the table with his fist. But after a little he broke the 
general silence by saying with a good-humored smile: 
" Do you know, I am awfully sorry that I'm not going 
too." 

This year, 1882, Tolstoi's newspaper article on the 
Moscow census fell into the hands of Nikolai' Nikolaye- 
vitch Gay at a time when that celebrated painter was in 
a state of great mental depression. His heart was set on 
fire; he left his little estate in the country w r here he was 
vegetating, feeling that life was not worth living, and 
went immediately to Tolstoi with the intention to work 
for him. He bought canvas and paints, drove to his 
house, actually fell on his neck and kissed him. 

"Lyof Nikolaitch, I have come to do whatever you 
wish me to," he said. " Shall I paint your daughter?" 

"Paint my wife," said Tolstoi, and the artist remained in 
his house a month, seeing him every day and growing 
more and more fond of him, for they loved the same 
things. Their friendship lasted without a cloud till Gay's 
death in 1894. 

The countess was charmed with him — "the dear, 
simple-hearted man!" 

Another acquaintance whom Tolstoi made this year 
was the witty satirical critic, Nikolai Konstantmovitch 
Mikhailovsky, who had done so much to make Russia 
acquainted with Darwin, Mill, and Spencer, who had 
sided with Tolstoi in the educational controversy of 
1875, and who, years before, had with characteristic 
acumen written a sort of astrological chart of Tolstoi's 
psychological future. He was associated with the witty 
nobleman, Mikhail Yevgrafov tch Saltuikof (" Shche- 
drin"), in editing the Otetchesvennuia Zapiski, and he 
called to remind Tolstoi that he had once promised to 
contribute to it. 

Mikhailovsky found the count simple and sincere but 
giving the impression of being a man of the world by 
the easy, confident manner in which he waved aside 



292 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

the business part of their conversation, and politely 
ignored the promise that he had made. Mikhailovsky 
said that they had heard that he was writing a story. 
Might he not have it for his monthly ? 

"Oh, no," said the count, "Strakhof found a story 
among my old papers and made me polish it up and 
finish it. It is already placed. " 

And with light compliments to the magazine he made it 
evident to Mikhailovsky that it would be better not to say 
anything about his offer. Mikhailovsky came to the con- 
clusion that the offer and his evading its fulfillment were 
both the result of momentary impulses. He found that 
Tolstoi was one of the pleasantest of men to talk with; 
on occasions when they disputed rather warmly Tolstoi 
would say: — 

" There, now! We are beginning to get hot; that is not 
well. Let us smoke a cigarette and rest awhile." The 
cigarettes did not end the disputes but seemed to calm 
them. 

Quite disillusioned by his experiences in the Lyapinsky 
and Rzhanof houses, among the drunkards and prosti- 
tutes of Moscow, Tolstoi left his family to enjoy their 
luxuries and returned to Yasnaya Poly ana to think over 
his three months of city life, which in spite of the tribula- 
tions he had undergone had given him much of value. 
He made one short visit to Moscow and on his return wrote 
the countess a letter, which elicited a reply full of kindly 
and sensible advice. She wrote him that his letter was 
most gloomy and tragic. She felt that his state of mind 
must be the result of illness and advised him to undergo 
a- cure. She felt genuinely sorry for him. In the old 
days when he was dejected and felt like killing himself it 
was because he lacked faith; but now he had found a 
faith. Why should he be unhappy? He knew that 
hungry, starving, sick, wretched, and wicked people 
existed. But there were also cheerful, healthy, happy, 
and good people. 



NEW ACQUAINTANCES 293 

Her letter seems to have acted like a tonic. He replied 
that it made him glad and he acknowledged that he was run 
down : perhaps it was his age, perhaps an ill turn, and he 
already felt better. He wanted her love — it was the one 
thing he wanted. No one else could cheer him so. Soli- 
tude was necessary for him for a time and had already 
freshened him up, and her love gladdened him more than 
anything else in life. 

How much better he was is shown by a letter which 
he wrote to the countess in April: — 

"I went out to-day at eleven and was intoxicated by 
the beauty of the morning. It was warm and dry. Here 
and there where the foot-paths were glazed over with ice, 
little tiny spikes and tufts of grass are showing under the 
dead leaves and straw; the buds on the lilacs are swelling; 
the birds no longer sing desultorily but have already 
begun to chatter about something, and around the shel- 
tered corners of the house and by the manure-heaps the 
bees are humming. 

"I saddled my horse and rode out. In the afternoon 
I read; then I went to the apiary and to the bath-house. 
Everywhere grass, birds, honey-bees; no policemen, no 
pavement, no izvoshchiks, no bad smells, and it is very 
pleasant." 

He came to the conclusion that it was so pleasant that 
the countess and the younger children had better return 
to the country while he would go to Moscow and stay 
with the boy's who were studying at school or at the 
University. 

"For me, with my thoughts," he said, "it is equally 
good or bad everywhere, and town can have no effect on 
my health; but it has a great effect on the children's and 
yours." 

Tolstoi wrote his friend Alekseyef that he often felt sad 
at the triumphant self-satisfied insanity of the life around 
him. It seemed strange to him that he could see it so 
clearly while the others were unconscious of it: "So we 



294 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

stand face to face, not comprehending one another and 
wondering and condemning one another; they a host, I 
all alone." 

But these tremendously serious views of life could not 
prevent him from enjoying the gayety of the young people 
— his own children and his nieces and nephews; dur- 
ing that summer of 1882 he took as much interest as any 
one in ' The Post-box, ' ' which was a sort of ' 'Uncut Leaves' 9 
magazine, consisting of unsigned contributions in prose 
and verse, written by the various members of the family. 
They were read aloud each Sunday evening. Tolstoi's 
favorite sister-in-law, who always spent the summer at 
Y&snaya with her children, described the gayeties in a 
letter to Biryukof. She says that the notes were long or 
short, on various themes, sad, poetic, or humorous; 
secrets were told; occurrences were described. Some- 
times a whole sheet would be made up like a newspaper. 
Tolstoi himself often wrote for it, and several of his 
humorous poems have been preserved. He liked to read 
the contributions aloud and took as much interest in 
it as any one. 



VI 

MANUAL LABOR 

"My Confession" had been accepted for publication 
in the magazine Russkaya Muisl ("Russian Thought") 
and had been submitted in proofs to the clerical censor, 
the Archpriest Sergyevsky. He refused to license the book 
and had the sheets burned. It was printed at Geneva 
and smuggled copies were circulated in Russia, where 
it was also copied clandestinely by hand or by some 
multiplying process. 

Tolstoi sent it to Turgenief , who read it with the greatest 
interest, regarding it as remarkable for its sincerity, 
truthfulness, and strength of conviction. But he could 
not fully accept its author's position. It seemed to him 
founded on false premises and likely to lead to a gloomy 
denial of all human life — to a kind of nihilism. 

The limitation of the spread of his new ideas caused by 
the arbitrary act of the censorship was at first very hard 
for him, for it prevented him from seeing the fruit of his 
works; but before long he came to regard this disappoint- 
ment as not cruel, but rather as blessed and wise. " What 
you do lovingly," he wrote in his diary, "not seeing the 
reward, is surely God's work. Sow! Sow! And what- 
ever is of God will come up — and will be reaped, not by 
you as a man, but by that in you which did the sowing." 

In October the family returned to Moscow, where 
Tolstoi' had bought a house for thirty-six thousand rubles. 
It was situated in the Dolgo-Khamovnitchesky Pereulok, 
not far from the Moskva River. He had extensive 
changes made in it but forgot that rooms for servants 
had to be provided. He w r as waiting for the countess and 

295 



296 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

the children with two carriages when they arrived, and 
they found a dinner ready and some progress made in 
getting settled. 

Soon after they were established Tolstoi took up the 
study of Hebrew with the Moscow Rabbi Minor, who was 
surprised how quickly the count got into the spirit of the 
language and often caught a meaning that had escaped 
his own attention. He read from Genesis to Isaiah, skip- 
ping whatever did not interest him. He also read the 
Talmud, questioning the moral views there presented and 
the Talmudic explanation of the Biblical legends. 

The countess was greatly grieved at this fad; for with 
it vanished the gayety with which he had returned from 
the country. She did not want him to waste his health 
and strength on "trifles." She felt that his literary 
activity was at an end. "It is a great, great pity," she 
wrote to her sister. Boboruikin, who saw him again, re- 
alized that he was passing through a period of passionate 
repudiation of all the idle, egotistic, predatory, and insen- 
sate things with which well-fed gentlefolk sweeten their 
aimless existence. Especially was he opposed to the 
custom of ladies going in decollete gowns, while outside 
their coachmen had to wait and almost freeze to death. 

This year he began to drop the use of his title. He 
desired even the peasants to address him in the simple 
Russian manner, with his name and patronymic and not 
with the formal "Your Luminousness" (vashe sydtyelstvo). 
He now affected the muzhik attire of sheepskin tulup, 
with greased high boots and sheepskin cap, taking a 
wicked delight in the queer mistakes which people not 
recognizing him often made. Many a man lost a golden 
opportunity of hearing or seeing the great writer because 
unable to penetrate the disguise. 

He was also beginning to live according to his theory 
that every man should do hard manual labor, in the 
sweat of his brow. On one occasion he was seen to harness 
himself to a hand-sledge on which a tub w r as fastened and 




3 

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u 

fa 
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MANUAL LABOR 297 

drag it down to the well, fill it with water, and drag it 
back again to the kitchen. When the water gave out in 
the well, he went down to the river and after an hour's 
work returned exhausted. He also insisted on building 
the fire in his stove, lighting the charcoal in the samovar, 
making his own bed, and cleaning his own boots. The 
following year he took lessons in shoe-making and before 
long appeared in high hunting-boots of his own manu- 
facture. It was a great pleasure for him to sit on his low 
bench and imitating his teacher " ardently and conscien- 
tiously, with extraordinary patience," thread the waxed 
ends. The countess did not object except when he 
wearied himself in overdoing; she thought it a harmless 
amusement, when it came as a relaxation, to drop his 
book and mend a tattered shoe. 

It w r as always an amusement to the children to see their 
father cook his own breakfast: he would boil four eggs on 
the samovar, then make the coffee. By the time the chil- 
dren had collected around the breakfast-table the eggs 
were ready; he would try to fish out the eggs, always 
burning his fingers; the eggs he would eat in a tumbler 
with bread crumbed into it. 

When Tolstoi returned to Yasnaya Polyana in April, 
1883, he found that a fire had destroyed more than a 
score of the huts and outbuildings belonging to the 
peasants. He felt very sorry for their sufferings; he 
reckoned their losses at about eight thousand rubles 
above insurance, but was amazed at the strength and 
courage and independence shown by these people. He 
gave them the timber to replace their izbas, and he sent 
to his brother for eight hundred bushels of oats for them. 

The following month he went again to Samara to 
drink kumys ; while he was there Turgenief on his death- 
bed penciled the unsigned note — his last — begging "the 
great writer of our Russian land" to return to his literary 
activity. "Ah!" he wrote, "how happy I should be if I 
could think that my request would have an effect on you." 



298 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Tolstoi put off answering it, and on the third of Sep- 
tember " the giant of the Steppes" passed away. 

Tolstoi was asked by the Society of Lovers of Russian 
Literature to read a paper on Turgenief at a memorial 
meeting. He accepted the invitation and spent the 
autumn preparing it. Meanwhile he had been sum- 
moned to serve as a juryman at the district town of 
Krapivny and refused because of his religious convictions 
— really as a protest against the whole system of civil and 
criminal justice. He was compelled to pay a fine of one 
hundred rubles. 

The lecture on Turgenief was set for the fourth of 
October and all Moscow was expected to pack the 
University hall. Suddenly the pig-headed authorities 
interfered, and forbade it to be given. Yet it was per- 
fectly innocuous and free from what the countess called 
"liberal squibs." She wrote her sister that every one 
was angry about it except the count, who was glad to be 
excused from appearing in public. 

A week or two later he returned for a brief visit to the 
country and on the way met with a serious misfortune. 
His portmanteau fell out of the sledge and was lost. It 
contained several important books, as well as proofs, 
and some manuscript chapters of his new book, "What 
do I Believe?" Advertisements were inserted in the 
papers, but it was never returned to him. He felt worse 
about losing a borrowed volume of Strakhof 's than about 
the loss of his manuscripts, which he was able easily to 
reproduce. 

On his return to Moscow he began his lessons in 
cobbling, and one evening he was so merry over it that he 
was seen to dance a waltz with as much agility and light- 
ness as if he had been the Count Tolstoi' of twenty years 
before. 

In February, 1884, he finished his new book, "What 
do I Believe?" and, realizing that it was hopeless during 
the reactionary reign of Alexander III. to submit it to the 



MANUAL LABOR 299 

censor, printed an edition of fifty copies, which he thought 
might be licensed, as it could be seen that it was not for 
general circulation. The Archimandrite of Moscow, who 
was head of the censor committee, read it and thought 
it contained many lofty truths, and saw no reason to 
prohibit it. But Pobyedonostsef, whom the countess 
charged with tactlessness and pedantry, pronounced 
against it. Yet Pobyedonostsef admired Emerson and 
published a translation of one of his books. He also had 
a high opinion of Tolstoi, but not of his theology. The 
fifty cgpies comprising the whole edition were sent to 
Petersburg, but, though the law required that they should 
be burned, they were illegally distributed among influ- 
ential officials — a rarity for bibliophiles. It was also 
printed in Switzerland and, like the other book, circulated, 
as it were, in underground channels. The famous por- 
trait of Tolstoi sitting at his desk was painted during the 
time that he was finishing " What Is to be Done, Then?" 
by the famous artist Gay, who was the only person 
admitted to the study while the writer was at work* 
Occasionally they would be heard laughing heartily; then 
again it was said "they would appear as if the brows of 
both of them were seared by the wrath of God." 



VII 

THE CRIME OF PROPERTY 

Tolstoi's youngest daughter, Aleksandra, was born 
on the last day of the following June. He was at that 
time in the depths of one of his most terrible moods, and 
so convinced of the wrongfulness of living amid such 
luxury that on the very evening before the child was born 
he left his home not intending to return. The countess 
wept all night, and when at five in the morning she heard 
that he had come back she went to him and insisted on 
knowing what she had done to be so punished. "My 
fault," she said, "is only that I have not changed, while 
you have." 

Her husband sat somber and morose and said not a 
word, absolutely absorbed in the birth-pangs of his own 
soul, which were to him worse than the physical anguish 
of the wife whom he loved. What is more tragic in all 
the story of this strenuous spirit? The countess in 
despair retired to her room, and a few moments later a 
little girl was born. Christ's word that he came not to 
bring peace but a sword was never more perfectly 
exemplified. It is interesting to note that this youngest 
of the Tolstoi children was destined to come into contro- 
versy with that mother, who on account of her mental 
anguish was forbidden to nurse it. 

A natural consequence of this soul-storm was that he 
determined that he must rid himself of his possessions; 
still he realized that he had obligations to his wife 
and children, and it became a serious puzzle to know 
how to manage it. The first step that occurred to him 
was that he should "try freely, without violence and in 

300 



THE CRIME OF PROPERTY 301 

a friendly way, to manage the business with the muzhiks 
at Yasnaya," taking everything from the steward, al- 
lowing nothing to be done for himself and contrary to 
his convictions. He begged the countess not to oppose 
his wishes but at least to let him try the new plan, which 
he said could harm no one and might result in something 
very good and important. 

The countess felt badly to have her husband, as she 
thought, waste his splendid mental energies in doing 
what younger and coarser men might do to better advan- 
tage — log-splitting, lighting samovars, and making boots, 
excellent as those occupations might be as a rest or 
change. His writing she considered as higher than any- 
thing in life. Playing at Robinson Crusoe w r as pretty 
poor business, though she said, "If you enjoy it, w r hy, 
enjoy it. Let a child enjoy itself as it likes as long as it 
does not cry." 

Certainly her spirit was most angelic. After writing 
that letter so full of playful earnestness, she sent him 
another on the same day in which she said: — 

"Suddenly I pictured you vividly to myself and a 
flood of tenderness rose in my heart. There is something 
in you so wise, kind, naive, and obstinate, and it is all 
lighted up by that tender interest in every one, so char- 
acteristic of you, and by that look of yours which pene- 
trates into the souls of men." 

If she had been a childless wife, there is no doubt that 
she would have followed him into all his extremes, but 
as a practical woman, knowing life, she could easily see 
that he had as yet formulated no definite scheme which 
would settle the difficulties of such a renunciation. 

Not long after this Tolstoi' offered to transfer to her his 
whole fortune, copyrights and estates, telling her that 
he could not bear the burden. But she refused it, saying, 
"So you want to place it on the shoulders of me, your 
wife." Things were left in statu quo, and the same 
strenuous conflict came again and again. Again and 



3 o2 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

again Tolstoi, taking literally Christ's words, "He that 
hateth not father and mother and wife and child cannot 
be my disciple," left his home, not intending to return; 
but until the last tragic renunciation, each time he was 
driven back by his sense of duty. 

The countess did undertake the publication of her 
husband's books. She borrowed twenty-five thousand 
rubles and issued his works in various editions. She 
attended to the proof-reading herself, and she managed 
the business so admirably that the first year the gross 
returns were sixty thousand rubles. Scholars from all 
lands began to write for permission to make translations 
of his works and the count insisted that all should have 
the authorization. From the standpoint of the author 
he was quite right. If only one person is permitted to 
translate a masterpiece the chances are that the master- 
piece will not be well represented in a foreign language; 
but if any one is allowed to do the work, the succeeding 
versions will probably be a great improvement over the 
first.* 

Life after this went on pretty much as before. At 
Moscow, during the winter, there were all sorts of inter- 
esting diversions and occupations. The young people 
were studying; there were drawing lessons; they had 
literary evenings, made notable by the presence of the 
best-known writers. Music as usual filled a large part of 

* One arrogant translator of Tolstoi's works, who is most severe on his 
predecessors, translates the French idiom je veux dire as "I wish to say," 
when any school-boy knows that it signifies "I mean." The same man 
translates the German word pflichtloser Genuss as "a dutiless pleasure," 
which is of course sheer nonsense; and Tolstoi's Russian he can repre- 
sent with such a sentence as "It is not that, that I must write!" Even 
the German translator of "Anna Karenina" makes a most ridiculous mis- 
take in the Slavonic epigram, translating it "Vengeance is sweet, I play 
the ace." He mistook the word az (ya, I) for something else! All men 
are liable to mistakes, and translators, of all people, ought to be most 
humble and patient of others' faults. This is particularly true regard- 
ing Tolstoi's peasant-conversations, which are often incomprehensible to 
the natives of Petersburg, being extremely staccato and idiomatic and 
filled with local words. 




One of the Most Striking Portraits of Count Tolstoi. 



THE CRIME OF PROPERTY 303 

the program. The house became more and more a center 
for all the best intellectual life of the city. Tolstoi had 
his enjoyment in all this when he could forget his theories. 
But often he fled to the country to drink in the quiet of 
the rural scenes. In one of his letters to the countess 
(December 20, 1884), he tells of his ecstasy in driving over 
the deep, light, new-fallen snow under the enchanting 
starry sky in company with the sympathetic Misha, after 
being confined in a railway carriage with a landed pro- 
prietress (pomyishchitsa) in bracelets who was smoking, 
a doctor who prated about the necessity of capital punish- 
ment, a horrible drunken old woman lying senseless on 
her seat, a gentleman with a bottle in his bag, a student 
with a pince-nez, and a conductor who because the count 
wore a polushubok insisted on punching him in the back. 
" After all that came Orion and Sirius above the Zasyeka 
or crown forest, the silent snow, the good horse, the good 
air, the good Misha, and the good God!" 



VIII 

LITERATURE FOR THE MASSES 

In 1885 Tolstoi went on a trip to the Crimea with 
Prince L. D. Urusof, who had translated "What do I 
Believe V s into French. They revisited Sevastopol and 
Tolstoi picked up a cannon-ball: from its position, as he 
was assured by a veteran well acquainted with the ground, 
it must have been from the very cannon which Tolstoi 
had pointed and fired at a group of horsemen approaching 
the southern bank of the roadstead thirty years before. 
He knew that the only cannon-ball fired from his battery 
was the one he himself had directed, and he was morally 
certain that he had picked up the identical ball. 

Though he had gone to the Crimea not for his own 
pleasure but because his friend was ill, he began to feel 
that he was wasting his time in luxurious leisure and that 
his work was calling him. He cut his trip short. 

On his return he joined with a number of sympathetic 
friends in founding a publishing business, which was 
called Posrednik, "The Mediator," with the special 
idea of furnishing genuine literature to the millions of 
Russians who since the spread of popular education were 
able to read and, as Tolstoi told Danilyevsky, were standing 
like hungry jackdaws calling upon the writers of the 
Russian land to throw into their open mouths literary 
food worthy of them. 

For this enterprise, which survived in spite of the perse- 
cutions of the censor, Tolstoi wrote many of his best 
short stories. Some of them were forbidden before they 
were published; others were licensed by applying to pro- 
vincial censors and when detected by the lynx-eyed 

3°4 



LITERATURE FOR THE MASSES 305 

officials of the chief bureau were called in. The story is 
told that when Posrednik published the " Sermon on 
the Mount," the censor compelled the publishers to cut 
out the words "Take no thought for the morrow." The 
hunger of the Russian peasants for good reading was 
shown by the fact that more than ten millions of these 
booklets were distributed in the course of a few months. 

Tolstoi' wrote to M. A. Novosyolof , expressing his idea of 
the style and character of these publications — particu- 
larly those relating to Greek and Roman history, bidding 
him write in good, clear, comprehensible Russian — "just 
as you speak." He told him to take any epoch that 
illustrated the conflict of evil with good and if the first 
time it did not succeed to try it again. 

The influence of such an exposition w r ould be to make 
children, — aye, and grown people too, — try to imitate good 
deeds and thus become good and serve God — that is, 
Truth. 

Later he wrote to Feinermann telling him to finish his 
story as soon as possible and send it on, but advised 
him not to try to tell everything in one tale, that being a 
universal stumbling-block to those unused to writing. 

This year (1885) Tolstoi wrote a preface under the 
title "Industry and Idleness"* for a booklet by an exiled 
peasant named Bondaryof. Tolstoi declared that Bonda- 
ryof 's writing would survive all the other books mentioned 
in a biographical dictionary of Russian authors and would 
have a greater effect on people than all of them put 
together. Man's chief duty according to Bondaryof was 
to earn his bread with his own hands, and he claimed that 
a competent worker could perform in forty days enough 
work to support him all the rest of the year. Bondaryof 
in this argument seems to follow Thoreau, who lived in a 
hut at Walden to prove that he could reduce his living 
expenses to a few cents a day. Bondaryof's book, pro- 

* "Trudoliubiye ili Torzhestvo Zemlyedyeltsa." Literally, " Industry, 
or the Triumph of the Agriculturist." 



306 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

duced independently in Siberia and entirely uninfluenced 
by Tolstoi, proves how widespread was the leaven of 
thought which was working in the Russian mind. 

During the summer Tolstoi worked as usual in his 
fields, but by now he began to have so many disciples that 
their very numbers were troublesome. They came in 
swarms — all kinds. Frau Anna Seuron, the grand-niece of 
the composer Weber, who was then a governess in the 
household, gives an amusing picture of the hay-making, 
where counts, princes, teachers, and all sorts of pedigreed 
people tried to work in competition with the peasants, 
hacking awkwardly with unaccustomed scythes, each 
trying to outdo the other. As far as the eye could see 
there were workers — men, women, children, and govern- 
esses all helping to turn the hay. 

Among others who came was a vegetarian who passed 
himself off as William Frey from America, but was really 
a Russian who had lived through a most romantic and 
extraordinary experience, as army officer, scientist, 
emigrant, founder of a colony, common laborer, and 
follower of Comte. He spent five days at Yasnaya 
Polyana and proved to Tolstoi's satisfaction that it was 
wrong to slaughter even plant life by reaping the 
grain, that it was more natural for man to eat nuts and 
fruits, as is proved by the agility of man's cousin the 
monkey. 

Tolstoi' was instantly convinced of the sweet reason- 
ableness of this regime and vowed to abandon flesh meat 
thenceforth. He also gave up hunting and shooting, 
though Frau Seuron tells of one instance where the call of 
the wild was too much for him. He had been writing 
steadily for hours. He came out into the hall, threw the 
gun over his shoulder, but could not find his hat. As 
the sun was very hot he seized the first covering that lay 
at hand and fled like lightning from the house. Toward 
evening he was seen returning, immersed in thought, his 
bare head bent; he dragged behind him a slaughtered 



LITERATURE FOR THE MASSES 307 

hare and carried in his belt his daughter's gigantic 
turkey -red hat which he had worn on starting. 

Together with flesh went tobacco, which he began to 
regard as a luxury since it occupied fields which might be 
devoted to grain. It was a tremendous struggle with him 
and when others were smoking he would eagerly inhale 
the fumes: it was a sedative to his nerves. This habit 
also he conquered and was glad. 

Another of the visitors was the Jew Feinermann, who 
came announcing that he wished to find work. The count 
was pleased with him and sent him to the village, where he 
stayed some weeks, helping with the roughest work, even 
caring for those who were sick with typhus. The coun- 
tess distrusted him. He claimed to be a tailor, and she 
bought some linen and set him to work to make the count 
a pair of trousers; but, as in the "Hunting of the Snark," 
the bow got mixed with the stern, and the countess had no 
further use for him. He pretended he w r anted to join 
the Church so as to get the position of village school- 
master, but after teaching for a while the countess saw to 
it that he joined the army. He had many interesting 
reminiscences of his stay at Yasnaya. He tells how 
Tolstoi manured and plowed the widow Anisya's strip of 
land, bringing on his return to the house odors which had 
to be cured with burning pastilles. Tolstoi jestingly 
called this operation " smoking out the unclean spirits 
with incense." Feinermann also tells how they got in the 
hay and Tolstoi* boasted that he was ahead of the rest; 
he hurried so as to get the work done before sunset in 
accordance with the Russian proverb which says, " When 
the sun has set men cannot work." 

Arbuzof also tells how Gay and Tolstoi worked for three 
months in building a hut for the same widow Anisya. 
The two men laid the bricks and the daughters Tatyana and 
Marya plaited straw for the roof. They then had to con- 
struct the oven. But the bricks were not properly made 
and the hut began to sag and finally fell to pieces, and 



3 o8 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

then the count discovered that Anisya was trading in 
vodka! 

Still another eye-witness tells of Tolstoi's activities on 
his estate. This was Vaska Morozof, whom Tolstoi took 
into literary partnership when the school was flourishing. 
He had gone to Moscow as a cabman, but from time to 
time he heard of his old teacher, who had become working- 
man, plowman, mower, sower, woodsman, stove-builder, 
boot-maker, and carpenter. So he returned to Yasnaya 
to visit his relatives and see for himself what the count 
was doing, and he found him rebuilding the new house 
for Morozof s old aunt. 

"Dear me!" he said, "what has happened to Lydf 
Nikolayevitch ? Hair and beard quite gray and he has 
grown wrinkled — he is old. But see! how he sits astride 
of the top-beam, cutting out a notch to hold the rafter. 
His shirt-sleeves are turned up; his unbuttoned shirt 
shows his bare chest; his hair is disheveled, the locks in 
his beard shake at each blow of his ax. He has a chisel 
stuck in the girdle behind and a hand-saw hangs from 
his waist." 

He had not forgotten how to express himself with vivid- 
ness — that Moscow cabman, pupil of the count. 

One characteristic picture of Tolstoi at work is given 
by Feinermann. He was helping to rebuild the widow 
Anisya's barn. He himself cut down the aspens and 
stripped and smoothed them with adze and plane. 
In a week's time the uprights were up. Tolstoi had 
worked from morn till night and was much pleased 
when the boss-carpenter, the wise, practical Prokofei, 
complimented him on his handiwork. But when it came 
to fastening the cross-poles over which the thatch would 
be tied with ropes of straw, Tolstoi was not so much at 
ease. He had to climb to the rafter and bore the holes 
for the pegs. 

He climbed up and sat astride, but as soon as he took 
hold of the gimlet and bent back to adjust the point, he 




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LITERATURE FOR THE MASSES 309 

grew dizzy and crept down the ladder exclaiming, " No, 
I give it up. I shall never learn to do it." Prokofei en- 
couraged him and he tried it a second time, with the same 
result. Then Prokofei came down and taking Tolstoi 
aside said to him, " I know why you are unsteady on the 
rafter — you look down." And he instructed him to look 
up at his work, fix his eyes on the gimlet and the hole he 
was boring, and go ahead. "Try it," he said, "you will 
see how easy it is." 

This time he succeeded and his delight knew no bounds. 
On his way home he said that he had learned more that 
day than one sometimes learns in a whole year. And in 
order to illustrate the fearlessness achieved in other 
situations of life he told with graphic detail how he used 
to wonder that the simple-minded gunners at Sevastopol 
could load and aim their cannon with imperturbable 
calmness w r hile a hail of projectiles was thundering about 
them and shells were bursting and tearing men and 
horses to pieces. 

"I did not understand the secret of their courage," he 
said. "I do not mean that deep fundamental secret of 
absolute submission to Him who called us into existence : 
that is too distant and cannot be evoked every time one 
goes forward to point a gun. What I did not understand 
was the other secret — that of simply adapting oneself. 
It helps one to hold out for hours in such a hell. Now 
I see that the secret is Prokofei's. ' Don't look down! 
Look at your work!' The gunner sees before him only 
the charge, the sight, the muzzle, and so can do his 
work." 

The year 1886 was one of Tolstoi's most productive 
periods. Besides a large number of the best of his short 
stories, he WTote "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch, " which is the 
study of a tchinovnik's soul while facing the inevitable, 
as he moves down the long incline of a fatal illness. He 
also finished his treatise, "What Must be Done, Then?" 
The practical answer which he held up was, " Plenty of 



3io THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

work." As the day naturally divides into four parts 
determined by our food, and as the natural activity of 
man divides into four kinds, he would have all men labor 
before breakfast at the heavy work that makes them 
sweat — plowing, tending cattle, building, digging wells, and 
the like; during the time before the midday meal they 
should employ the activity of the fingers and wrists — in the 
making of clothes, boots, utensils, and other products of 
craftsmanship; between the noon and the evening meal 
they should employ the activities of the intellect and the 
imagination and work at science and art; and, finally, 
the evening should be devoted to social intercourse. 

His own practice in physical labor he claimed cleared 
his brain and filled him with animation. "Every day," 
he said to the novelist G. P. Danilyevsky, who visited him 
this year, " Every day, according to the season, I either 
dig the soil or saw and chop wood, or work with the scythe, 
the sickle, or some other utensil. You cannot imagine 
what a satisfaction it is to plow ... it is pure enjoy- 
ment. You walk along guiding and lifting the plow and 
you take no note of how one, two, or three hours go by. 
The blood flows gayly through your veins; your head 
grows clear, your feet feel light; and then the appetite and 
the sleep!" 

He felt that exercise and physical labor were as essen- 
tial to him as air; if he did not get it, he spent sleepless 
nights. The summer offered him plowing, mowing, and 
many other things to do. He did not like the autumn; 
in winter, as he was bored by walking over hard pave- 
ments with no end in view, he sawed and split wood. 

"What Must be Done, Then?" contained a savage 
attack on women's rights and a most amazing diatribe 
against those women who for any reason limit the num- 
ber of children they bring into the world. It ended with 
a hymn of praise to the fruitful mother who will not even 
after she has borne twenty children say that she has 
borne enough. 



LITERATURE FOR THE MASSES 311 

The book is worth reading as a curiosity of logic, 
and its vigor and its mordant criticism of what are really 
the abuses of our civilization might well waken men to a 
possible improvement. 

Gay and Tolstoi were becoming better and better 
friends. They were together at Yasnaya, and after the 
family moved to Moscow he still continued to be their 
guest. He declared that "our dear precious and holy" 
Lyof Nikolayevitch had kindled new life in him and he 
proposed to interpret his teaching. He accordingly made 
sketches illustrating Tolstoi's short stories and also a 
series illustrating the life of Jesus. Tolstoi was enthusias- 
tic over them. One, representing Jesus returning in the 
strength of the spirit, impressed him so deeply that he 
could not tear himself away from it: "It seemed lumi- 
nous, and its rays penetrated my soul." He thought Gay 
surpassed all other artists in giving the whole power and 
majesty of the Christ. 

He was still fond of art, but unless it fitted his test he 
renounced it. Anton Rubinstein was to give a concert 
in Moscow and Tolstoi, who admired him above all other 
pianists, was expressing regret that he should again miss 
hearing him : all the tickets were sold. Rubinstein heard 
of Tolstoi's desire and sent him a ticket. Tolstoi had 
put on his overcoat to go to the concert when he was 
assailed by the old doubts whether it was right for 
him to countenance a man who, according to his new 
theories, was not serving true art. The conflict between 
his desire and his conviction was so intense that it brought 
on a nervous attack which required a doctor's attention. 

Rubinstein was not offended by Tolstoi's staying away 
but offered to go to his house and play to him. But the 
plan was abandoned owing to the loss of Tolstoi's four- 
year-old son Aleksei, a beautiful boy with the good 
qualities of both his parents, who was suddenly taken 
ill and through the mistaken diagnosis of the attendant 
physician died of the croup. 



3 i2 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

About Easter time in 1886, Tolstoi', accompanied by 
Gay's son and two young aristocrats, set out for Yasnaya 
Polyana on foot, carrying a linen sack over his back. 
He had his notebook and a pencil tied to it in order to 
jot down anything of interest. 

The two young aristocrats were unable to keep up, but 
Tolstoi and young Gay on the third day entered the 
park of Yasnaya, well and happy, full of satisfaction at 
having accomplished their long journey. 

At one izba where they spent a night Tolstoi lay on the 
stove with a "dear old muzhik of more than ninety," 
who described with "artistic warmth" the early days 
under the Emperor Nicholas, whom he called Nikolai 
Palkin or the Stick. At that period flogging was the 
universal custom in the army and indeed all over Russia. 
Tolstoi' immediately wrote the story down and it was pub- 
lished in a hektograph edition by one of his admirers, who 
was almost immediately arrested through the activity of 
a spy. Tolstoi was besought, for his mother's sake, to let 
it be known that he had authorized the issue of the work 
and instantly replied, " Of course it was with my con- 
sent. I am always glad when my books obtain circula- 
tion. Tell his mother I will say so if I am questioned 
about it." 

Tolstoi was summoned to call on Prince Dolgoruky, 
the Governor-general of Moscow, but sent word that if 
that gentleman desired to see him he might see him at his 
house. Dolgoruky sent his adjutant to warn Tolstoi. 
Tolstoi received him politely and lectured him during 
his whole visit on the immorality of his position in serving 
such a government. 

While he was at Yasnaya that summer he received a 
visit from Deroulede, a tall man of military appearance, 
who wore a long gray coat "all buttoned down before." 
He desired to enlist Tolstoi, of all men, in persuading 
Russia to join France in a war of revenge against Ger- 
many. When Deroulede swore that the Rhine must 



LITERATURE FOR THE MASSES 313 

belong to the French, the count smiled and said: "The 
frontiers of a country should not be outlined with blood 
but should be settled by a reasonable agreement, allowing 
equal advantage to each side." He was so exasperated 
with his visitor that he dashed out of the room and 
slammed the door behind him. But Deroulede returned 
to the charge at his next opportunity and Tolstoi pro- 
posed that they should lay before an ordinary typical 
muzhik the proposal that the Russians and French 
should unite to squeeze the juice out of the Germans. 
The peasant scratched his head and gave as his answer 
that the best thing would be for the French and Russians 
to do some useful work first and then go together to the 
traktir, taking the Germans with them, and have a drink. 
Deroulede took his departure that evening. He realized 
that he had tackled the wrong man. 

A welcome visitor to Yasnaya was Mikhail Aleksan- 
drovitch Stakhovitch, who was the life of all hunting- 
parties, games, and the other sports of the young people. 
Tolstoi' loved him and he had a filial affection for the 
count. Feinermann describes a race through the long 
avenue of birches, in which the count took part. When 
he overtook some of the participants, " Grasshoppers!" he 
exclaimed, " where would you have been twenty years ago ? 
Then I would have shown you how to run! You have 
to do it, not by spurting, but by holding out. You gutta- 
percha figurines, try to sprint! We'll see what prizes you 
take in life's race — also by sprinting and spurting, I 
suppose. " 

Stakhovitch won his prize in life by taking an active 
part in the movement for constitutional freedom. At this 
time he learned how to plow a straight furrow and to mow 
evenly and to load the hay. All the young people, under 
the count's inspiration, w r ere intensely desirous of living 
with the people and like the people; some of them, includ- 
ing Tolstoi's sons and young Stakhovitch, even made their 
plans to take up their residence in the izbas in the village. 



314 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

But when the countess heard of it she set her foot down. 
"It shall not be/' she exclaimed. "You were born counts 
and counts you shall remain. " 

At this Tolstoi remarked that opposition from one's 
family and relatives indicated the measure of a man's 
readiness to serve the truth. 

Feinermann had evenings devoted to readings with the 
children and older people of the village. Tolstoi loved 
to be present and considered them worth any number of 
society functions. On one such occasion he read the 
story of " Ivan the Fool. " After he had read it he asked 
a muzhik — the poorest man in the village — to repeat it. 
His version did not exactly correspond to the original and 
some of the others grew vexed with him and tried to cor- 
rect him. But Tolstoi insisted that he should have his 
way, took notes and whatever vivid word, unusual simile, 
or happy phrase occurred he incorporated into the original, 
so that when it was published it was actually in the form 
that the peasant gave it. Tolstoi said that he always 
did that. He learned how to write from the people and 
he tested his work by them. " God Sees the Truth" was 
told him by one of his pupils and thus tested. 

He used to thank an old woman from a neighboring 
village for the help that she gave him in this way : he was 
delighted with the stories she told him and with her way 
of telling them. He said she taught him to speak Russian 
and to think Russian. 

Another of this year's stories, "How the Little Devil 
Earned a Crust of Bread," he dramatized under the title 
of "The First Distiller." It was performed at one of the 
booth-theaters during carnival time on the Dievitchye 
Polye as a popular entertainment, and as a lesson in 
temperance. One of Tolstoi's admirers describes how 
he once saw him wandering among the booths and other 
places of amusement in this much frequented ground. 
He dared not address him but followed him at a respectful 
distance. Others did the same, and when the count 




O 



h e 



LITERATURE FOR THE MASSES 315 

reached his own door more than twenty people had 
gathered into an escort for him. 

Tolstoi's activities in plowing led to a pretty serious 
illness. He had a sore shin but paid no attention to it. 
The countess pretended to be suffering from neuralgia 
as an excuse forgoing to Moscow. She persuaded a doctor 
of her acquaintance to accompany her to Yasnaya. 
Tolstoi had no faith in the medical profession and charged 
the doctor with having come merely for the sake of getting 
an exorbitant fee; but when Dr. Tchirkof asked gently, 
"Are you not disregarding the law of love to one's 
neighbor? " he allowed him to examine his leg. Tolstoi 
was really in serious danger; his temperature had gone 
up to 104 , his leg was badly swollen, and the bone 
was already much decayed. The pain was so intense 
that he sometimes shrieked and for more than two months 
he was laid up. 

As in the case of his other illness, so during this, Tolstoi 
composed a play, part of which he dictated to his wife, 
part of which he wrote. It was called "Vlast Tmui" 
— "The Power of Darkness" — and was founded on an 
incident which had been brought before the Law Court 
of Tula. 

One would hardly gather from this grewsome drama 
that Tolstoi exalted the Russian peasant above the 
luxury-poisoned aristocrats of his own caste. It depicts 
sordid sin and misery and crime with scarcely a relief. 
Its language is often so coarse that Tolstoi himself when 
he read it before the troupe that rehearsed it eight years 
later was rather ashamed and remarked that on account 
of the ladies he should have to modify it. 

In speaking of play-writing Tolstoi remarked that it 
was sculptor's work, w T hereas in writing novels he worked 
with a brush and was free to add color and simplify ; but 
the drama, according to him, had no shadows and half- 
tones: "Everything must be clear-cut and in high relief. 
The incidents must be ready, fully ripened, and the whole 



3 i 6 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

difficulty lies in representing these fully matured moments, 
these ripened moods of the dramatis personae. This," 
he said, "is extremely difficult, especially when the un- 
known peasant world is to be depicted." In writing 
this play he was actually frightened by the horror of 
the murder which takes place in it. The press censor 
passed "The Power of Darkness," but the dramatic 
censor prohibited its public performance and not until 
Nicholas II. came to the throne was it allowed on the 
stage. But it was given in Petersburg in a private house 
and members of the Imperial family were present. Wher- 
ever it was presented, either in Russia or abroad, it 
produced a powerful impression. It was noticed that 
the most sympathetic character in the drama was the 
humblest of all — the cesspool-cleaner, Akim ! 

There is a touch of pathos in the fact that even then he 
had to confess that as soon as people began to praise him, 
as they did for his drama, he felt the desire for personal 
reward and a stupid self-satisfaction. 

After each of his books was finished Tolstoi used to say 
to himself that it was the last that he should write for 
artificial society; it was time to write for those that really 
needed literature. But this he found it very hard to do. 
"Each time," he said, "I was caught in the familiar net. 
I did not speak as I should have done, I neglected the 
readers to whom I should have addressed myself. " 

His next important work was a philosophical treatise 
entitled " On Life," or, as he at first thought of calling it, 
"On Life and Death." In June, 1887, he wrote that he was 
deeply absorbed in it and could not tear himself away 
until the work was finished. When it was finished the 
stupid censor forbade it ; so, as usual, it had to be printed 
abroad and was clandestinely circulated in very inaccurate 
form. Tolstoi was not prevented by the authorities from 
reading a summary of it entitled "The Meaning of Life," 
before the Moscow Psychological Society. 

The French translation made by the Countess Tolstaya 



LITERATURE FOR THE MASSES 317 

fell into the hands of the late Ernest H. Crosby, son of 
the chancellor of the University of New York, a man of 
means and political influence, and he made a pilgrimage 
to Tolstoi, somewhat as the rich young man came to 
Jesus. Tolstoi' told him that it would be hard for him, 
" handicapped as he was by all the disadvantages of 
youth, health, and wealth, to do what he desired, but 
that he must try." 

Crosby on his return to America abandoned his politi- 
cal aspirations and his large law-practice, wrote Tolstoian 
poems and at one time from conscientious motives 
refrained from voting, though later he voted for Bryan 
on the ground that while it was wrong he had not 
quite reached the stage of development that demanded 
absolute abandonment of politics. Another American, 
Bolton Hall, using the American translation of "Life," 
made an excellent paraphrase of it, which was published 
in his book, "Even as You and I." 



rx 

CHANGE OF PERSONALITY 

Tolstoi's favorite brother-in-law had, ever since Sep- 
tember, 1878, been in the Caucasus, in an official capacity. 
He went there though Tolstoi had warned him that he 
was too late for the Caucasus, which was now spoiled by 
tchinovniks. He had been informed by his sister of the 
change taking place in her husband, and when he re- 
turned to Yasnaya Polyana he found that Tolstoi's 
whole personality had completely altered. He had be- 
come the personification of love to his neighbor, and it 
sometimes seemed as if for the very sake of these views 
he sinned against them by his severity on people who he 
thought were living lives not in accordance with his 
standard. He had lost all interest in education because 
he urged that education was sought only for the sake of 
getting above one's fellow-men and bringing them into 
subjection. Consequently he ceased to concern himself 
with his children's education and was displeased that his 
wife still employed tutors and governesses and sent the 
children to school. When his oldest son, Sergyei', was 
graduated from the University of Petersburg and con- 
sulted him about a career, the father told him to go to 
work like a peasant. 

He confided in Behrs that he had done wrong regarding 
his property in trying to throw the burden of it on others; 
he had offered it first to his wife and then to his children, 
but when they refused it he had adopted the plan of 
ignoring it, and ceasing to make any use of it except that 
by sheer necessity he had continued to live with his family. 
The countess told her brother that they gave away two 

318 



CHANGE OF PERSONALITY 319 

or three thousand rubles every year to the poor. He 
noticed also that Tolstoi had abandoned the use of 
tobacco and wine and that he was annoyed when any one, 
even the members of his family, attempted to serve him 
in any way, not realizing that it was a poor rule that did 
not work both ways. One enjoyment he permitted 
himself — flowers. He always had them on his table or 
in his belt, and Frau Seuron tells how he used to sniff 
their fragrance with his big nose and look around mildly, 
"as if thanking the Creator for giving them to men." 

Behrs noticed that the merry mood which had always 
been so enlivening to others had been replaced by a 
solemn gravity, which, however, did not seem to have a 
depressing effect on the others. He enjoyed their gayety 
though he rarely took part in it. When he was in the 
mood and for a moment forgot himself, he could romp 
as of yore. Behrs tells how one day shortly after 
his return Tolstoi' played tricks with him, to the delight 
of all, and unexpectedly jumped on his back as he was 
walking about the room. He advised the tchinovnik 
to quit the civil service and change his way of life, taking 
example from the young Prince Khilkof, who had left 
the army, given his lands to the peasantry, and gone to 
work for a muzhik without pay. 

Independently of Tolstoi Khilkof repudiated Greek 
Orthodoxy and was therefore, without trial, exiled to the 
Caucasus, where he settled with the Dukhobortsui, or 
Spirit Wrestlers. He was charged with influencing them 
to refuse army service, and again banished to a town in 
the Baltic Provinces, where he was under surveillance 
of the police, who constantly interfered with his corre- 
spondence. 

The countess told her brother, with tears in her eyes, 
that it was hard for her to have everything to do — the 
management of the property as well as the education of 
their children, and asked him if she ought to be blamed 
for not neglecting them or for not going about as a 



320 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

beggar: "Do you think I would not have followed him, 
had I not had little children ?" 

Verily to be the consort of Parsifal, even after he has 
seen the Holy Grail, is to be a martyr. It is manifest 
from the light of experience that if a man is determined 
to follow Jesus, with Western literalness accepting 
Oriental statements, he ought to go to the last extreme 
also and have no wife or child. If all would do that, the 
problem of poverty and all other human problems would 
be solved in one generation. 

Tolstoi's silver wedding was celebrated on the fifth of 
October, 1887, and of course he disapproved of the 
festivity, and called it the jubilee of Ankovsky-pie. This 
was in reference to a certain delicacy which he had 
formerly liked. It was so called after the friend who 
gave him the recipe. On one occasion when Behrs had 
been helping the count sweep the room, his younger 
sister happened to come along and congratulated him on 
his conversion, declaring she had never seen a more 
zealous disciple. She declared she had seen the count 
make the sign of the cross over him and swear him to 
renounce Ankovsky-pie and all its evil works. 

On another occasion Tolstoi* was complaining that 
women had, above all others, hindered the spread and 
application of his teachings. He attributed this to the 
incapacity of women to make or accept accurate and 
precise definitions. Behrs called attention to the pecu- 
liarity that a woman when picking up anything never 
bends her back but always squats to do it. Behrs and 
the count tried the experiment with all the women of the 
household, including the old nurse and even his three- 
year-old daughter Aleksandra. It was a most successful 
demonstration of this acute observation, and while the 
women were engaged in picking up a little pocket-brush 
from the floor the count laughed uproariously. 

Behrs could not accept his brother-in-law's new 
theories, and when, at the end of a two months' visit at 




Count Tolstoi in 1887. 

From the painting by Ryepin. 
By permission of Berlin Photographic Co. 



CHANGE OF PERSONALITY 321 

Yasnaya, he took his departure, a coldness had arisen 
between them. Yet Behrs continued to have the highest 
regard for his sister's husband, who, he declared, all his 
life long had said and done only what he felt was true. 



X 

ACTIVITIES OF 1887-88 

This year (1887) Tolstoi's interest was awakened in the 
cause of temperance among the people. He ordered the 
st£rosta of the village to summon all the inhabitants at 
ten o'clock in the morning. A table and bench were 
placed before the communal house. The count took 
out of his pocket a piece of paper and put it on the table 
with a bottle of ink and a pen. Great curiosity was 
aroused. When all were present he gave them a lecture 
in plain, simple language on the dangers of drunkenness, 
on the evils that followed the use of tobacco and vodka. 
He spoke slowly and persuasively, urging arguments 
that would appeal to peasant folk and introducing striking 
anecdotes and similes. 

The women urged their husbands to follow Tolstoi's 
advice; so, seeing that he had them on his side, he asked 
those that would agree henceforth to drink no more to sign 
the pledge. 

"Do you consent?" he cried. 

Just at that moment a harsh voice sounded: "Let me 
pass." 

"Room for Yegor Ivanuitch," cried the peasants, and 
an old muzhik stepped forward. 

"I want to speak a word about temperance," he said. 
" I want to call your attention to the fact that at weddings, 
births, and baptisms, it is impossible to get along without 
vodka. One can do without smoking, but vodka — that 
is different. It is necessary, it is indispensable. Our 
fathers always drank it; we must do the same." 

"You can substitute sugared rose-water," replied 

322 



ACTIVITIES OF 1887-88 323 

Tolstoi. " In the south rose-water is always served with 
sherbets thick as honey.' ' 

" Doesn't that make men drunk ?" asked many at once. 

"No!" 

"Put your hand in front of your mouth, Yegor Ivanu- 
itch! Do you need to keep it wide open ?" whispered the 
women. " Sign it!" 

"Do you then agree?" asked the count again. 

"Yes, yes!" 

The muzhiks crowded up to the table; the women were 
radiant; even the children seemed to realize that some- 
thing great was happening; the idea of sugared rose-water 
enchanted them. 

"So then no more vodka, no more tobacco?" 

"No, there's an end of smoking and drinking. You 
have promised. Now bring shovels and dig a ditch." 

They were more than ever filled with curiosity. What 
was going to happen? 

"Let the smokers throw in their tobacco!" 

"Also their pipes?" 

"Yes." 

Cigarettes, cigars, jars of tobacco, pipes, cigar-cases 
made of rosewood or cherry, all went into the ditch. A 
tall, handsome youth brought a silk-fringed tobacco-bag, 
the gift of his sweetheart; he emptied the contents into 
the all-devouring ditch. But that was not enough. 
When he started to put the gift back into his pocket the 
others seized it from him, tore it up, and flung it with the 
rest of the treasures of sin. Of course some of them still 
smoked on the sly and the snake of drunkenness was not 
wholly scotched at Yasnaya. 

Tolstoi was not so severe on the peasants who got 
drunk as on the men of culture, students, and professors 
who drank in the presence of waiters and set an example 
of evil, entirely unworthy of their superior standing in the 
world. He thought there was a certain charm in seeing 
how affectionate the muzhik was when he was tipsy; but 



3 2 4 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

the celebration of the anniversary of the University of 
Moscow, which ended generally in much drunkenness 
and debauchery, aroused his ire and he launched his 
diatribe against it in his " Culture's Holiday," which 
aroused much protest. 

During the years 1887 and 1888 Tolstoi produced little. 
He wrote Gay that lying fallow made him happy. "From 
habit and from self-love and from the wish to befog 
oneself one craves to write and to get away from the life 
around one," but at that time there was no irresistible 
impulse driving him, and he claimed to have rid him- 
self of the indulgent critic within him which formerly 
approved of anything that he scribbled. 

He said, "I abstain from writing and feel a kind of 
moral purity such as one feels from not smoking. I do 
not know how to rejoice sufficiently at having conquered 
that habit." 

Among those who visited Tolstoi about this time was 
George Kennan, who had many lively discussions with 
him. 

Professor I. I. Yanzhul called one evening at Tolstoi's 
and found him making a pair of boots. He was told to go 
into the library, where he would find a package of American 
newspapers. One of them was a copy of the Sandusky 
1 Times," which contained the report of a sermon preached 
in the cathedral and summarizing Tolstoi's rendering of 
the Gospels. Both the sermon and the editorial com- 
menting on it proclaimed Tolstoi to be the thirteenth 
Apostle. Yanzhul said that the contrast between the 
picture of the new Apostle seated at his bench with his 
sleeves turned up, wearing an apron and diligently and 
peaceably stitching at a boot, and that painted by the 
American preacher caused him to burst into a loud laugh. 
Tolstoi* wanted to know what the trouble was, and when 
Yanzhul told him what rank the Sandusky " Times" had 
assigned to him laughed gleefully and thought it was 
really " quite American. " 



ACTIVITIES OF 1887-88 325 

This same year the Russian artist Polyenof finished his 
painting of "Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery." 
Tolstoi' went to see it. After gazing at it he pointed to 
the figure of Christ and remarked, " You do not love that 
one." 

u Which one?" 

"The one sitting in the middle. . . , " 

"Why, that is Christ." 

" Yes . . . but you do not love him. " 

And he got up and left the studio. Polyenof had never 
seen Tolstoi before. 

If he did not approve of Polyenof s conception of 
Christ, he did approve of Gay's, though Gay was not so 
great a master of painting and Polyenof had spent years 
in creating the picture and had gone to the Holy Land to 
make studies for it. Tolstoi kept urging Gay to produce 
and express what had been ripening in his soul for years, 
the series of illustrations to the Gospels. He encouraged 
him by saying that when a man is expressing anything 
new and important and something that men need, he is 
fulfilling his mission: "When a man feels that and 
works for it — as you, I hope, are now working — it is the 
greatest happiness on earth. " 

He himself was at that very time working at an essay on 
Art, but the fount of inspiration seemed to have dried 
up again. After he had walked from Moscow to Yasnaya, 
he could not finish it. Something else was on his 
mind and that he was bound to finish, for he felt that he 
saw this something as no one else saw it. Exactly two 
months later he wrote Gay another letter, in which he 
makes the extraordinary remark that an "unreasonable 
man married to an angel and another married to a devil 
are equally unhappy," and also that all people are dissatis- 
fied, so that it is the same for them all — a remark of pure 
pessimism — whether true or not. He incidentally in- 
formed Gay that he was also writing a comedy and a story, 
and that it was for the most part well with his soul. 



326 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

"Indeed," he says, "it would be a sin if it were not so, 
for seldom a day passes without joyful proofs that the 
fire Christ brought to the earth is kindling more and 
more. " 

The comedy to which he referred was "She was 
Crafty," or as he called it later, "The Fruits of Enlight- 
enment." It deals with the folly of spiritism. Years 
before he had met at Moscow the professor of chemistry, 
Butler of, and was surprised to find that he was a believer 
in table-tipping and the other humbuggery of that super- 
stition. One of his neighbors in Moscow was a rich and 
highly respected gentleman by the name of Lvof, who 
had spiritual seances at his big mansion, where able and 
distinguished people of all ranks used to assemble. Tol- 
stoi' attended one of them, and while the darkness pre- 
vailed P. I. Samarin had caught hold of a hand which 
had more flesh on it than would be likely to clothe a 
spirit's. 

Lvof claimed that no one really died and told his 
friends that three days after his death he would be 
smoking an invisible cigar, and invisibly participating 
in all the activities of his household. He invited Tol- 
stoi' to come and see him pass into the beyond. Three 
days later he sent for the count, but when Tolstoi reached 
the house it was too late. However, he stood by the in- 
animate body and was greatly impressed by the inci- 
dent. That was in 1886. 

Lvof was the original of the aristocratic Leonid Feddo- 
rovitch Zvyedintsef. Samarin was the skeptic Sergyei 
Ivanovitch Sakhatof. The play was given at Yasnaya 
Polyana during the New Year holidays, and Tolstoi altered 
it and added to it up to the very day of its performance 
until there were one hundred and thirty-five scenes 
altogether. The parts were taken by the five oldest of 
Tolstoi's children, assisted by friends : the Countess Tat- 
yana Lvovna acted Tanya the chambermaid; the Count- 
ess Marya Lvovna was the cook. One of the actors was 



ACTIVITIES OF 1887-88 327 

A. V. Zinger, son of the Moscow professor of mathematics. 
Tolstoi scolded him for smoking cigarettes, telling him 
that tobacco befogged a man's critical faculties and led 
to drinking vodka. 

One of the rehearsals took place in Tula and a part of 
the amateur troupe drove there in sleighs. After they 
had rehearsed till late one night, it was arranged to go for 
a sleigh ride by moonlight. "Do whatever you like,' 7 
said the Countess Tatyana, "only don't disturb the 
servants, for if papa hears of it, he will be displeased. " 

At the last rehearsal but one, V. M. Lopatin, a Justice 
of the Peace, who was well acquainted with peasant life, 
came to take the part of the Third Muzhik. He tells how 
he drove over from Tula w T ith a large sleighing-party and 
reached Yasnaya late at night, tired by the drive and by 
the keen, frosty air. They found a well-spread supper- 
table, at which vodka was conspicuous by its absence. 
A member of the party, however, had provided for that 
emergency and some of them surreptitiously warmed 
themselves by a long pull at the bottle in a corner under 
the stairs, unbeknown to the host. 

All this time Tolstoi was in raptures, and he was so 
pleased with Lopatin's work that he added considerably 
to the Third Muzhik's part. Lopatin tells how abashed 
he was to hear the count's hearty Russian muzhik-laugh 
as he slapped his sides and wagged his head in ap- 
proval. 

The performance came off on the eleventh of January, 
1 890, before a crowded audience and was a grand success. 
For a wonder the play was permitted by the censor and 
w r as publicly performed by an amateur company at Tula 
in aid of a Home for Destitute Children. Tolstoi went to 
see it and was as usual mistaken for a muzhik; the door- 
keeper roughly put him out. 

Afterward when he noticed how a local aristocrat-actor 
politely pushed the peasants out of Anna Pavlovna's door, 
Tolstoi stopped him, saying, "No, that is not natural; you 



328 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

must bundle them out as the door-keeper just bundled 
me out!" 

It was next given at Tsarskoye Selo by a troupe of 
aristocratic amateurs before the Emperor, the Empress, 
and a throng of Grand Dukes and Duchesses. Alex- 
ander III. was so pleased with it that he publicly thanked 
the actors. 



XI 



C THE KREUTZER SONATA " 



The story about which Tolstoi wrote to Gay was 
"The Kreutzer Sonata. " It was finished just before the 
holiday performance of the comedy and read aloud to a 
company of fifteen persons who assembled in the Countess 
Sophia Andreyevna's bed-room. 

It was read by M. A. Stakhovitch. 

The introductory chapter went well, but when the plot 
of adultery and murder with the consequent plain speak- 
ing began to be revealed, Stakhovitch rebelled. The 
young girls were sent out. When the story, some of which 
the author himself took part in reading, was finished the 
company sat around the tea-table agitated and dum- 
founded. Tolstoi wanted them to express their opinions. 
Some one ventured to suggest that he might have given a 
more positive solution of the problem,* but Tolstoi 
defended himself and urged that in a work of art it was 
indispensable that the author should go beyond what 
others had done. "It won't do," he said, "to be like 
my friend Fyet, who at sixteen wrote, 'The fountain 
bubbles, the moon shines, and she loves me,' and at sixty 
wrote, ' She loves me and the fountain bubbles and the 
moon shines.'" 

Tolstoi's facing of the sex problem, illustrated in "The 
Kreutzer Sonata, " as well as his extreme views about non- 
resistance — both based on a literal interpretation of 
Christ's words, brought on him more criticism than any 
other of his doctrines. "The Kreutzer Sonata" was 
held up by the censor, but like his other books circulated 

* Shakespeare's Sonnet cxxix is pertinently illustrative of this thought. 

329 



330 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

clandestinely. Like compressed air it worked more 
energetically — in other words, had a greater influence — 
wherever it went. A book may influence in one direction 
or by its extreme views it may by an inevitable reaction 
produce quite opposite results. 

In " What do I Believe ?" he had urged marriage, large 
families, and the wrong of divorce; and had declared that 
he could not approve of a celibate life for those who 
were ripe for marriage and he considered any kind of a 
union with a woman, whether as wife or as mistress, as 
holy and obligatory. In "The Kreutzer Sonata," and 
especially in the "Afterword" written to answer those who 
thought he argued in favor of free love, he urged that only 
in case men and women were sure that all existing children 
were properly provided for could any one be justified in 
entering upon marriage without being guilty of a moral 
fall. In other words that " it was better for the unmarried 
not to marry/' and of course it goes as a corollary that the 
existent children should be brought up without education, 
without what we moderns generally consider as art or 
music or even pleasure, but simply learn to till the soil 
and commune with God — not only becoming like little 
children but continuing as little children from the cradle 
to the grave. 

Tolstoi had repudiated the Church and he refused to 
recognize the authority of the State; yet he was in accord 
with the Catholic Church, Greek and Roman, in placing 
virginity above either fatherhood or motherhood, as well 
as in regarding a marriage already consummated as a 
finality. 

"The Kreutzer Sonata" created more of a sensation 
all over the world than any of his other books. Arch- 
bishop Nikanor of Khersdn denounced Tolstoi as a wolf 
in sheep's clothing and clamored for his destruction on 
the ground that his teaching was undermining the whole 
structure of society. The Countess Sophia Andreyevna, 
desiring to include the story in her husband's collected 



"THE KREUTZER SONATA" 331 

works, procured an interview with Alexander III. They 
talked together for nearly an hour at the Anitchkof palace. 
The Emperor asked her why she was so strenuous to 
obtain permission to publish a work directed against 
family and marriage — a work which ought to be dis- 
tasteful to her. 

She replied that she asked his permission not as Tol- 
stoi's wife but as the publisher of his works, and in that 
capacity desired to issue them complete. The Emperor 
assured himself that Tolstoi had no secret printing-press 
and then granted her the authorization on condition that 
it should not be issued or sold separately. 

This condition was violated a year later, when Tolstoi 
repudiated all the rights to whatever he had written after 
1 881. It was not the countess's fault that various unscru- 
pulous publishers brought out "The Kreutzer Sonata," 
but the Emperor blamed her severely, exclaiming, " If that 
woman has deceived me, I know not whom I can trust. " 

The American translation met an obstacle in the post 
office authorities, who ruled that it was indecent and 
refused to transmit it by mail; and many persons who 
before reading it had professed a high admiration for 
Tolstoi completely reversed their opinions of him. 

In Russia the book had a more practical effect than 
elsewhere. It is said that in many cases in consequence 
of it young men and women who took his words as gospel 
truth refrained from marriage and in many families 
unhappiness was caused by its teaching. Others cried, 
" Sour grapes; Tolstoi is growing old. " 

These remarks troubled him. He wrote that it was 
grievous to him to have lived in his early days in a bestial 
manner and still more grievous because people would 
say: "It is all very well for you, a decrepit old man, to say 
these things; but you did not live so. We too when we are 
old will say the same. " It was a bitter thought to him 
that he was an unworthy instrument for the transmission 
of the will of God. 



332 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Severe as he was on those who were not living in accord- 
ance with what he considered the will of God, he was sym- 
pathetic with those who were incontinent, and he was in- 
dignant — as indeed he had good right to be — at the treat- 
ment accorded to Gorky and the lady who came to Amer- 
ica with him as his wife. But there were reasons for 
that which he could not have known. A misunderstand- 
ing of the circumstances and a notion spread by the New 
York papers that he was an anarchist were responsible 
for Gorky's distress. Even a Chief Justice of the United 
States Court, without listening to his side, declared that 
he ought to have been kicked out of the country. 

Tolstoi could be very severe upon those of his own class 
that infringed his law of life; he was correspondingly 
lenient upon those, especially peasant folk, that were 
carried away by their passions. A baby's dead body was 
found in one of the ponds of his estate. Tolstoi went to 
the suspected mother of the child and said to her: "If 
you are innocent, you will not suffer, but if you are guilty, 
it must be very hard for you." The poor woman burst 
into tears and confessed that she had strangled her baby 
and thrown it into the pond. 

The same summer a girl in a neighboring village 
became the mother of twin boys. Tolstoi went to see her. 
She told him that if he had not come she would have 
killed her babies and committed suicide, for her father 
was very poor; she had no mother, and since that shame 
had come upon her she felt she could not hold up her 
head. 

Tolstoi replied that she should not feel ashamed before 
men but before God. "We are all sinners alike," he 
said. "It would have been a great crime, unfortunate 
girl, if you had smothered your innocent babes, and you 
would have suffered terribly." He bade the father not 
to scold or reproach the girl, but to console her. 

When the family learned the circumstances they gave 



"THE KREUTZER SONATA" 333 

the man a horse, a cow, some money, some cotton and 
linen, and forty poods of flour, and promised him more 
flour every month. 

The muzhik shed tears of joy and fell at Tolstoi's feet. 
He rebuked him, saying: — 

"You must never do that. Kneel and pray only to 
God, who will alw r ays treat you mercifully," and he reiter- 
ated his command that he should not scold his daughter. 

11 God forbid that I should scold her," exclaimed the 
muzhik. " I now have reason to rejoice in my grandsons ; 
but for them I should have starved. It is ten years since 
I have been able to afford a horse to plow with, and now 
I have a horse, a cow, and all that I need; I am the 
happiest of men." 

During these stormy days the two great painters, Gay 
and Ryepin, were using their art to preserve for posterity 
the features of the great writer. Ryepin painted Tolstoi 
in his room — that bare little room with scanty furniture, 
decorated only with spade, scythe, and saw. Gay made 
a bust of him which Tolstoi considered an excellent like- 
ness; he also painted a portrait of the Countess Marya 
Lvovna. He said it was not difficult to paint such a 
wise, kindly, and animated little figure, but without love 
for those qualities it would be impossible to paint it. 

Gay's picture of "What is Truth?" or "Christ before 
Pilate," was finished that year (1890), and being Tolstoi'an 
in style was not allowed public exhibition. Gay brought 
it to show Tolstoi, who was so impressed by it that for 
days he could hardly speak of anything else, though he 
ventured to criticise the modeling of the right hand and 
arm of Pilate. 

Tolstoi considered that Gay depicted Pilate as asking 
the question not for information but as a contemptuous 
retort, and he thought the idea new and profound and 
expressed clearly and strongly by the picture. 

" That fat, shaven neck of the Roman procurator, that 
large, stout, well-fed, sensual body half-turned away, that 



334 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

outstretched arm with its gesture of contempt," he 
thought were splendid. He felt that the picture was 
alive; the slavish anxiety about himself, lest he should be 
denounced at Rome, the trepidation of his petty soul in 
spite of the toga, and the majestic pose and the height 
in contrast to "the worn-out sufferer who had during 
the night been subjected to arrest and insult seems to 
him very impressive.' ' 

Tolstoi's praise affected Gay so much that the latter 
embraced and kissed Tolstoi and said, "Do not praise 
it ... I shall become proud." 

Tolstoi' persuaded Tretyakof to buy it for his collection, 
but it was arranged to send it abroad first for exhibition. 
Tolstoi* was greatly interested in this plan and wrote 
Gay:— 

"You are excited about it! Shame, dear old fellow,* 
I say, shame! — Still, I myself am the same and prize 
earthly fame. But I struggle hard and obstinately and 
advise you to do the same. My life goes on well; the 
waves of the sea of worldliness wash over me, yet I con- 
trive not to get wholly choked." 

* Dyedushka golubchik. Literally, " Grandpa, little pigeon ! " 



XII 

RULES FOR PERFECTION 

During the summer Tolstoi went with Mdrya Lvovna 
to the Optin Monastery for the third time. His widowed 
sister, the Countess Marya Nikolayevna, had become a 
nun and was at the convent of Shamordin, founded by 
Tolstoi's friend Father Ambrosy. 

As usual he had an animated discussion with that 
reverend monk. 

He also had an interview with the author and scholar, 
K. N. Leontyef, and asked him how he, an educated man, 
could become an Orthodox believer and live in a 
monastery. 

Leontyef replied that if Tolstoi lived there he would 
come to believe. Tolstoi rather illogically agreed with 
him. He offered Leontyef a copy of his "Gospel in 
Brief," to which the monk retorted by handing Tolstoi 
a pamphlet in which he refuted Tolstoi's treatment of the 
Gospels. 

Tolstoi said, "This is a useful brochure: it advertises 
my Gospel." 

"Your Gospel!" exclaimed Leontyef, indignantly. 
"How dare you here in the Hermitage ruled over by such 
a saint as Father Ambrosy, speak about your Gospel? 
Such talk is permissible only in Tomsk or some out-of- 
the- world place like that." 

"Well," replied Tolstoi, "you have plenty of friends. 
Write to Petersburg and perhaps they'll banish me to 
Tomsk." 

This is what the Church authorities would have gladly 
done, had they dared, and even Pobyedonostsef did not 

335 



336 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

hesitate to incorporate slanders against him in his annual 
report to the Emperor. 

In 1 89 1 Tolstoi wrote V. V. Rakhmanof that he had 
already outlived the point of view expressed in " What do 
I Believe ?" and he laid down for him what he now felt 
were the five Rules for Perfection : — 

To consider all men as equals and love them as such — 
Zulus, idiots, scoundrels, and beasts. 

To be perfectly pure. 

To be perfectly free (not to take oaths). 

Never to use violence for the protection of oneself or 
others, even against an animal.* 

To do good to one's enemies. 

He assured him that Christianity is great just in that 
it was not invented by Christ but is a law humanity 
followed long before it was expressed, and which it always 
will follow. 

This year Tolstoi divided his property among the 
members of his family : about fifty thousand rubles to his 
wife, which was said to be about the sum that she brought 
him as her marriage-dowry; the estate of Yasnaya 

*Anutchin once asked him if he would be justified in killing a wolf 
that attacked him. "No," replied Tolstoi, "you must not; for if we kill 
a wolf, we may also kill a dog and a man, and there will be no limit. Such 
cases are quite exceptional; and if we once admit that we may kill and 
and may resist evil — evil and falsehood will reign in the whole world 
unchecked, as we see is now the case." 

Tolstoi* would have approved of the good American lady who would 
not let the worms be exterminated on her fine elm trees, with the result 
that the trees were killed. On the same principle in the great war raging 
between men and rats (in which some authorities predict the rodent will 
win out) Tolstoi would side with the rats, although he was mortally afraid 
of them, declaring that there was something terrible and symbolical about 
them. Their swiftness of movement, their restlessness, their cruelty, all 
seemed to him to symbolize sin and awoke in him a feeling of horror. 

His doctrine of non-resistance was expressed with even more startling 
vehemence in an interview with George Kennan, who after telling him of 
the horrible treatment of a delicately nurtured, well-educated girl whose 
clothes were stripped from her by brutal soldiers, asked him if in that case 
it would not be the duty of a man to use violence to defend her. The 
tears came into Tolstoi's eyes but he stuck to his colors. "No," he said, 
"not even in such circumstances would it be right." 



RULES FOR PERFECTION 337 

Polyana was shared by her and their youngest son, Ivan, 
and the other properties went to the other children. The 
house in Moscow fell to the share of Lydf Lvovitch, who 
afterward sold it to his mother. 

Henceforth he lived like a stranger-guest, always wel- 
come, under an alien roof, eating his kasha-gruel and his 
simple vegetarian dishes, doing his own housework, and 
blaming himself for his weakness in enduring even that 
extreme of luxury. 

What that luxury was may be seen from the descriptions 
of visitors. The driveway to the house was rough and 
neglected; the house itself a plain two-story structure of 
stuccoed brick, simple and unpretentious, without 
piazzas, towers, or any striking architectural features; no 
vines relieved its bareness; the front door was like a 
back door and reached by a flight of steps and a small 
square platform of gray, uncut stones with grass growing 
in the chinks. The upstairs dining-room had bare 
floors, plain and old-fashioned furniture; the windows 
were shaded with simple muslin curtains, the walls 
whitewashed and hung with old portraits. His own 
small, untidy room was decorated with the utensils with 
which he earned his bread in the sweat of his brow. 

Mr. Kennan, whose description of his appearance and 
surroundings agrees with that of many others, says that 
the count seemed to take a deeper pride in being able to 
put on a boot-heel or trim an upper than in his ability to 
write "War and Peace/' but adds, "I should rather 
read his book than wear his boots." 

The Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, who visited him, says: 
"The simplicity of his attire and the plainness of his 
manner and the frugality of his evening meal — despite 
his hard work in the fields — which my companion and 
I were hospitably invited to share, imparted to his 
presence a grandeur that made my fashionable clothes 
seem the coarser of the two, made me ashamed of ever 
having indulged in luxuries at my table at home, made 



338 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

me feel, despite my host's and his family's friendliness, so 
uncomfortable as sincerely to wish that by some magical 
art I could exchange my fashionable suit for a homespun 
crash blouse worn outside of homespun jean trousers 
girded at the waist with a belt, and my immaculate linen 
for a coarse woolen shirt with a broad open collar and my 
polished gaiters for a pair of common bast shoes." 

Many of those who enjoyed the hospitalities of Yasnaya 
Poly ana, where there were two camps, the unconventional 
following of the landless barin, and the fashionable world 
with which the countess and those of her children who 
agreed with her surrounded themselves, declared that from 
appearances the beam of happiness would tip to the 
former way of life rather than to the latter. 

But one visitor said of the countess: "If there are two 
kinds of halos in heaven, hers may be larger than that of 
her husband. To be a genius of his type is no small 
thing, but to be the wife of such a man requires peculiar 
greatness." 

Tolstoi was at Y&snaya Polyana working on "The 
Kingdom of Heaven is within You," when his sixty- 
third birthday was celebrated, and he called the atten- 
tion of Zinger the young mathematician to the inter- 
esting fact that the number twenty-eight, the second 
of the four perfect numbers in ten thousand (numbers 
which are equal to the sum of all their dividends), was 
particularly fortunate for him. He was born on the 
twenty-eighth day (O.S.) of the month in the twenty- 
eighth year of the century and had left the army when he 
was twenty-eight. 

With the same idea he asked a Japanese visitor in 1896, 
" Do you know how old I am ?" 

"I think you are seventy-eight," replied the visitor. 

"No, I am twenty-eight," said Tolstoi, referring to 
the fact that his new life began with the publication of 
"My Belief." An even more striking coincidence is seen 
in the fact that he left his home for the last time on the 



RULES FOR PERFECTION 339 

twenty-eighth day of the month and that liberation from 
impossible conditions also seemed to him a fortunate 
event in his life. 

At this festivity they had music. N. N. Figner, the opera 
singer, and his wife sang all Tolstoi's favorite songs; they 
played games, and Tolstoi himself started the game we 
call "scandal." A young engaged couple happened to 
be present. He whispered to his next neighbor, "It is 
pleasant to w r atch the lover and his betrothed," and when 
it had gone round the dinner-table at which thirty sat 
down, it came out, "Why is this special official confused ?" 

About this time that brilliant mathematician and novel- 
ist, Sophia Kovalevskaya, had died; and one day when 
they were discussing, in reference to her, the question 
whether women could be the equal of men in scientific 
work, Tolstoi remarked that if women were as capable 
as men it would be unjust, for then they would be unques- 
tionably superior, as they already are in their femininity, 
their charm. 



XIII 

FAMINE RELIEF 

The next two years in Tolstoi's life were spent in active 
participation in the relief of the terrible famine condi- 
tions which were beginning to prevail in the govern- 
ment of Veronezh, and even in that of Tula, and which 
spread and caused infinite suffering and numberless 
deaths. The Russian authorities systematically made 
light of it, denying the reports that were circulated. At 
first Tolstoi stayed at home and contented himself with 
writing articles to awaken the people to sympathy. But 
through the influence and example of his friend Rayevsky, 
who actually gave up his life in the service of the people, 
Tolstoi went to the famine district with him, the better 
to study the conditions. He intended to stay only two 
days. He stayed two years. 

His whole family took hold with him. His wife, who 
remained in Moscow, procured linen and medicines for 
the typhus patients, and helped to enlist charitable 
individuals to go and serve as nurses. The two oldest 
sons worked in one province of Tula, and Lyof Lvovitch's 
health broke down owing to his labors in Samara. The 
Countess Tatyana Lvovna collaborated with her father 
and sister till her health gave out; when she had rested 
she returned to the work. Contributions of money and pro- 
visions flowed in from distant parts of the world as well 
as from Russia. Tolstoi's own remarkable vigor and 
strength were taxed to the utmost and he was often so 
exhausted that he could not express the simplest thoughts. 
What added to his difficulty was that he was convinced 
that the whole principle of feeding the hungry and 

340 



FAMINE RELIEF 341 

distributing money was bad. He wrote: "I know I am 
not doing the right thing, but I can't do the right thing, 
and I can't refrain from doing. I dread the praise of 
men and ask myself every hour, 'Am I not sinning?' I 
try to judge myself strictly and to act as in God's sight 
and for His sake." 

He insisted that the famine came about only because 
men like himself stood aloof from their brothers ; that the 
only way to mend matters was for them to change their 
lives and destroy the separating wall, returning to the 
people what had been taken from them, and commingling 
with them. 

He could not help being drawn into the relief work, 
but when some one wrote for an autograph to be sold for 
the famine fund he wrote: "Who can have any need of a 
line of my handwriting? For heaven's sake don't 
imagine that I say what I do not think and feel. I 
cannot and never could either read in public or write in 
albums!" 

At one time there were under his supervision two 
hundred and forty-six eating-houses and one hundred 
and twenty-four kitchens for children, with from fifteen 
to sixteen thousand peasants to be fed. And that was 
only a part of the campaign. 

The whole story of his activities may be read in his 
famine articles. 

As soon as it was learned that he was engaged in this 
work, the Church proclaimed him Anti- Christ, and the 
priests tried to frighten the peasants with stories of his 
wickedness. It was preached from the pulpit that he 
branded men on their foreheads to seal them to the devil. 
A bishop delivered a sermon before a crowded audience, 
denouncing Tolstoi for seducing the peasantry with 
food, fuel, horses, and other worldly goods, and he assured 
them that the Church was strong enough to exterminate 
this evil-doer and all his works. 

It seemed strange to the simple-minded people that the 



342 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Anti- Christ was doing so much for their comfort while 
the Church, like the Government, stood aloof and let them 
perish. 

In February, 1892, Tolstoi" allowed the Russian cor- 
respondent of the London "Daily Telegraph" to have 
his complete article on the famine. The " Telegraph" 
published it in full, while the Nedyelya ("The Week") 
was allowed by the censor to give only portions of it. 
The Moscow Vyedomosti ("Gazette"), inspired by 
Pobyedonostsef, printed a garbled version of what 
Tolstoi had done and editorially called for his annihila- 
tion. Prince Shcherbatof wrote a letter demanding his 
suppression and the report was circulated that he had 
been arrested. Many people who possessed portraits of 
him tore them up, lest they should be regarded as politi- 
cally compromising. He was indeed in imminent danger 
of being sent to the monastery fortress at Suzdal, where 
people deemed dangerous to the Church were sometimes 
confined by administrative process without trial for acts 
which the Church disapproved. Tolstoi himself had in 
1883 been instrumental in obtaining from the Emperor 
the release of three Old Believer Bishops — Konon, 
Gennady, and Arkady — who had been left for twenty- 
three years in the damp dungeons of this inland Schliis- 
selberg and forgotten by the Government. 

His aunt the Countess Aleksandra Tolstaya went per- 
sonally to the Emperor and told him the exact state of 
things, and as soon as Alexander III. convinced himself 
that Tolstoi had no designs on his life " his face gradually 
assumed its usual mild and extremely genial expres- 
sion." A few days later he issued an order requesting the 
Minister of the Interior not to touch Tolstoi, saying, 
"I have no intention of making a martyr of him and 
bringing universal indignation on myself." 

Tolstoi's wife, who thought he was in serious danger, 
went to the Grand Duke Sergius, just appointed Governor- 
General of Moscow, and explained to him that her husband 



FAMINE RELIEF 343 

had no sympathy with revolution. The Grand Duke told 
her that the best thing that Tolstoi could do would be to 
write a declaration to that effect for the Pravitelstvenny 
Vyestnik ("The Government Messenger"). Both his 
wife and the Countess Tatyana wrote Tolstoi urging 
him to do so. 

Tolstoi replied that for twelve years past he had been 
writing what he believed and what could not be pleasing 
to the Government. What he wrote about the famine 
was only a part of what he had been wTiting and saying 
during all those years and what he proposed to continue 
saying till he died. It was forbidden by "a senseless ille- 
gal censorship" and was therefore published abroad in 
a perverted form. Now only ignoramuses, the most 
ignorant of whom formed the court, could help knowing 
what he thought and only such ignoramuses could ever 
dream that views like his could suddenly change and 
become revolutionary. He therefore refused to bend to 
the demand of these unchristian people, even though he 
were accused of pride. It was not pride, he said, but con- 
viction. This brief article was sent to the Government 
gazette, which of course refused to print it. It was 
then sent to thirty other papers, some of which also 
refused it. 

Tolstoi w r as never again in serious danger of arrest, but 
many of those who from principle tried to carry out h's 
doctrines o helped to circulate his writings were impris- 
oned or exiled. This made him to the last degree indig- 
nant and he more than once protested, urging that if any 
one deserved to be punished it was he. 

"It has been noised abroad," he wrote, "that I have 
just been arrested. Unhappily for me, happily for my 
enemies, nothing of the sort has happened. I see that 
they are imprisoning my disciples, that they are multiply- 
ing the vexations of which my friends are the innocent 
victims. Yet I am the only one who is dangerous for the 
authorities. Evidently they do not think I am worth 



344 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

persecuting. I am ashamed. If only they would con- 
sent to imprison me ! How happy I should be to suffer 
in my turn. " 

In 1892 Tolstoi began to give up regular work in the 
fields, and as if in commemoration of this activity the 
famous picture painted by Ryepin in the summer of 
1887, "Tolstoi Plowing/' was widely circulated in litho- 
graphed copies. Tolstoi between the two horses is a sym- 
bol, and so indeed are the two horses so humorously 
and satirically contrasted. 

Under the title "The First Step," he wrote an intro- 
duction to a Russian translation of Howard Williams's 
"Ethics of Diet" and advocated vegetarianism on 
moral and humanitarian grounds. He had already 
written a preface to Dr. Alice Stockham's "Tokology," 
the principles of which appealed to him. His "Con- 
versation among Leisurely People" written about this 
time might have been suggested by "Is Life Worth 
Living?" though it grew out of his own experiences in 
trying to meet family objections and difficulties. 

This year Tolstoi indulged in one of those paradoxical 
and surprising sobresauts corresponding in his literary 
career to his suddenly leaping on Behrs's back or waltzing. 
He translated one of Guy de Maupassant's stories, "Notre 
Dame des Vents," adding touches of his own (after the 
manner of Fitzgerald), and published it under the name of 
"Frangoise" in a collection of that author's short stories 
which he edited. He remarked at the time that he con- 
sidered Guy de Maupassant, next to Victor Hugo, the best 
of contemporary writers, and when some one expressed 
surprise that he should have written a preface to such a 
book or allowed his name to be connected with it he 
said: "One must regard De Maupassant from the right 
view-point. He is not only a man of remarkable talent 
but also the only writer who has at last understood and 
presented the whole negative side of the relations of the 
sexes. . . . No one else has described the sufferings and 




Count L. N. Tolstoi, 1892. 



FAMINE RELIEF 



345 



spiritual torments born of base relations with women as 
he has. . . . Such stories certainly cannot evoke in the 
reader any love of profligacy or attraction for it, no matter 
into what mire the author may lead one." 

Tolstoi's literary judgments must always be taken 
with due consideration of his violent prejudices. He 
liked Emerson and Hawthorne, Whittier and Theodore 
Parker, but he considered the Rev. Adin Ballou the great- 
est of American writers. He was never tired of praising 
Henry George. He knew something of Longfellow but 
nothing of Lowell and, in general, though he was a reader 
of wide scope, he was unfortunate in not always knowing 
the best works of those whom he criticised. He had 
never read Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi. " Once he 
had liked Walter Scott, but not in his later years. He 
cared little for Zola or Daudet but admired Balzac. He 
greatly admired the dramatist Octave Mirbeau, in whom 
he found a mingling of Dumas fils and De Maupas- 
sant, and especially liked his "Les Affaires Sont les 
Affaires." Above all, he enjoyed Flaubert's vigorous, 
keen, harmonious, complete, and perfect style of pure 
beauty. 

There is almost no mention in his writings of the great 
field of German fiction — Von ScheffePs "Ekkehard," 
Spielhagen, Frenssen, or the modern German dramatists, 
though he always spoke respectfully of Schiller and was 
familiar with Kant and some of the other philosophical 
writers and the German theologians. It was certainly 
unfortunate that the customs authorities on the border 
seized and retained all the books that he brought back 
with him from abroad. 

About this time his "Fruits of Enlightenment" had 
been performed at the Malui or Little Theater in Peters- 
burg and he was asked to write other pieces for it. He 
replied that he would be glad to do so and felt a special 
need to express himself in that way, but he w r as certain 
that the censor w^ould not pass any play that he would 



346 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

be likely to write. He spoke with considerable feeling 
of the horrible sense that what he wrote would not be per- 
mitted, so that he kept abandoning his plans and his 
life was passing away all in vain. 



XIV 

PUBLIC UTTERANCES 

The most important book of the year was "The King- 
dom of God is within You/'* which contains the most 
terrible picture of tyrannical injustice ever given to the 
world — not even exceeded by Helen Hunt Jackson's 
story of the treatment of the Indians by the United States 
officials. In it he argued with illustrative examples that 
all governments which employ force are immoral, existing 
for the benefit of the few and to the injury of the majority, 
and therefore it is a man's duty to refuse service under 
them even as voters. It goes as a natural corollary with 
this that he shows up the wrong of war, including with it 
patriotism, the chief cause of war. 

Tolstoi's rigidity of demand reminds one of the Emperor 
Nicholas's plan of the railway between Moscow and 
Petersburg — drawn in a straight line and not deviating 
even to touch important cities. One must apply human 
reason and the light of experience to his arguments, and 
fortunately we are not required to accept all of his premises. 
But for stimulus, either in the way of agreement or dissent, 
nothing can be more vivid. Of course "The Kingdom " 
was forbidden by the censor, but the story that it told of 
the "wretched government, drunk with power," who so 
unjustly had the twelve peasants flogged, had its effect: 
the official was dismissed from the service. 

*The original manuscript was not entrusted to the mail but wa3 
brought to the United States by Yanzhul, who gave it for translation to 
Mrs. Aline Delano. It was offered to all the principal publishers, but 
they had not as yet awakened to the importance of Tolstoi's theological 
writings, and no one had the foresight to accept it. The translation 
was then brought out in London by Walter Scott. A rival version by 

347 



348 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

The Russian press was forbidden to publ'sh appeals 
for help for the famine sufferers, and Tolstoi and several 
other leaders met at a private house in Moscow to devise 
means to overcome the difficulty. Tolstoi suggested 
publishing a Smyes or Miscellany, to which the best 
writers should contribute. This was carried out and he 
contributed his folk-story, "The Empty Drum," which 
the censor allowed when for "tsar" the word "chieftain" 
was substituted. 

For another number of Smyes he translated an 
article written by Henry George and advocating the 
single tax, which seemed to him to be a solvent for all 
economic difficulties. He was greatly impressed by 
"Progress and Poverty," and when a little later S. 
Semyonof came to consult him in regard to some land 
which his commune had authorized him to buy, Tol- 
stoi' told him the land ought to be free and all private 
rights in it ought to be abolished. Then he began to 
praise Henry George's system, which (if it were intro- 
duced), he said, would bring the land into the hands of 
those that worked it. He believed that this revolution 
in land-holding could be accomplished by the will of the 
Emperor just as emancipation had been. "No other 
power," he said, " would do it because it would be contrary 
to the interests of the classes that support a consti- 
tutional government." 

One evening Tolstoi', in his sheepskin tulup and felt 
boots, called to see D. Anutchin, who had editorial super- 
vision of Smyes. He was out and the skeptical maid 
was told to inform Anutchin that Count Tolstoi had 
called. She gave the message sarcastically, but was soon 
made to realize that the supposed muzhik was a count and 
regretted having treated the great writer so impertinently. 

S. Semyonof contributed to the Vyestnik Yevropui 

Constance Garrett was issued by Heinemann. Mrs. Delano was the 
first translator of " War and Peace," but at a time when even Tolstoi's 
novels had hardly risen above the literary horizon. 



PUBLIC UTTERANCES 349 

some interesting details of his acquaintance with Tolstoi 
at this time. He describes him as having grown quite 
gray ; his hair had thinned considerably, and he seemed 
to have shrunk in size; but his keen gray eyes (Ernest 
Crosby said they were blue) still had the piercing quality 
which always made people stand in awe of him. He 
spoke with approval of a priest named Apollof who had 
renounced the dogmas of the Church and unfrocked 
himself. He also attached great importance to the 
action of a schoolmaster, E. N. Drozhzhin, who when he 
was summoned to serve in the army in 1891 refused to 
take the oath and was kept in solitary confinement in 
Kharkof for a year and then sent to a disciplinary battalion 
at Voronezh, where his health was frightfully injured by 
ill-treatment. He was afflicted with tuberculosis but was 
sentenced to nine years' imprisonment. This was 
because he desired to follow God's law. 

Tolstoi's relations with the poet Fyet had considerably 
changed. Semyonof reported him as saying: "Fyet 
wants nothing and his demands are very modest. Give 
him a soft bed, a well-cooked steak, a bottle of good wine, 
and a pair of fine horses, and he wants nothing more." 

After the famine was relieved by good crops in 1893 Tol- 
stoi' wrote an essay entitled "Non- Acting" — a plea for a 
kind of quietism whereby men would pause and consider 
the meaning of life, before they became absorbed in use- 
less or baneful affairs. He himself translated it into 
French, as he felt that it was important to be accurately 
presented. He wrote a preface to AmiePs "Journal 
Intime," which his daughter had translated. 

In 1894 Gay died suddenly. He had only recently 
finished his picture of "The Crucifixion," which Tolstoi 
thought the greatest work of his brush; but when the 
Emperor saw it he pronounced it horrible, and, as Tolstoi 
had predicted, it was prohibited. 

During his stay in Moscow in January he attended a 
meeting of the ninth congress of Russian Naturalists and 



3So THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

was given a seat on the stage. As soon as he was 
recognized the whole audience thundered its welcome. 
He arose and bowed, and it seemed as if the applause 
would never cease. He afterward said to Zinger: 
" Why did you say there was o be no ceremony ? . . . 
All those men in evening dress! ... It was not a 
scientific meeting, it was a scientific carnival.' ' 

During the Christmas holidays the young people of 
his household got up a masquerade, in which they and 
their friends impersonated some of the celebrities of the 
day — Anton Rubinstein, the historical novelist V. 
Soloviof, Ryepin, and others. Lopatin, the actor of the 
Third Muzhik, put on one of Tolstoi's blouses and a belt 
and impersonated Tolstoi* himself so well that some of 
the guests were deceived. Tolstoi' entered heartily into 
the spirit of the travesty and cordially shook hands with 
his double. 

This year Tolstoi passed the required test for license to 
ride the bicycle and like President Eliot took great 
delight in long rides on "the silent steed." His wife, 
knowing that he used a shabby old bicycle belonging 
to his son, wished to make him a present of a new one. 
Tolstoi went to the shop and selected one that suited 
him, but before it was delivered he came to the conclusion 
that it had been so long since he had had anything which 
belonged to him exclusively he ought not to encumber 
himself with it: he countermanded the order and con- 
tinued to ride his son's. He had attained the knack of 
riding without touching the handle-bar. 

He was stirred to some indignation at the report of 
the enthusiasm aroused in the Russians by the flirtation 
of the fleets at Kronstadt and Toulon; and he wrote 
"Patriotism and Christianity," in which he gave a 
humorous, almost comical description of the absurdities 
of such sham alliances. 

He wrote two of a series of articles or essays on religion. 
One was "Reason and Religion," which was like a bomb 



PUBLIC UTTERANCES 351 

flung into the camp of his followers. "I know that I 
shall be blamed/ ' said Tolstoi' to Feinermann, with 
whom he still kept up an active correspondence, "but 
still I must repeat ' Reason, reason, reason!' There is 
no other way to attain the truth." 

In consequence of this Tolstoi'an encyclical many of 
his followers returned to the Mother Church, and some 
became monks and blamed Tolsto for rationalism. 

In January, 1895, he finished his essay on " Religion 
and Morality," in which he recognizes three types of 
religion: that of selfishness, the personal religion which 
makes a man seek salvation for himself, no matter what 
may happen to others; the religion of patriotism, which 
sets the chief aim of life in family, clan, nation, or in all 
humanity (Positivism), and thirdly that which takes as a 
gu ding star some Lord or Law the service of whom or of 
which swallows up all thought of personal advantage. 
He comes to the conclusion that " Religion is a relation 
established by man between his personality and the 
infinite universe or its source; while morality is the 
sufficient guide to life, resulting from that relation." 

The same idea is expressed by the Rev. Charles F. 
Dole's definition that "Religion is a working-theory of 
life." Every man must have a working-theory of life, 
consequently every man must have a religion. 



XV 

THE DUKHOBORS 

Alexander III., having escaped numerous attempts on 
his life, died at Livadia on November i, 1894. His suc- 
cessor, Nicholas II., received the representatives of the 
Local Governments on the twelfth of February of the 
following year and in reply to their congratulations, in 
which were mingled timid suggestions that the represen- 
tatives of the people ought to be allowed to take part in 
public affairs, he dashed their hopes by speaking of "the 
insensate fancies" of those who desired to participate in 
carrying on the government and by promising to uphold 
the principle of autocracy as firmly and unchangeably as 
it had been maintained by his never-to-be-forgotten father. 

A private meeting was called to discuss the situation 
and Prince Shakhovsko'i went to Tolstoi's house to invite 
him to be present. He found the count in the yard 
chopping ice. The tone in which he repeated the words 
"insensate fancies" proved to the prince that he sympa- 
thized with the indignation of all public-spirited men, and 
at the meeting he was asked to draw up a protest against 
the Emperor's rejection of their proposal. It was to be 
published in the press of other European countries. He 
replied that he thought any intervention on his part 
would be injurious to the cause, since a protest signed by 
him would be attributed to his anarchistical views and 
consequently not representative of the best Russian opin- 
ion. However, he did not refuse to do it. 

The following month Tolstoi's youngest child, Ivan, a 
boy of great promise, died at the age of seven. It was a 
terrible blow to the countess, who felt that she could not go 

35 2 



THE DUKHOBORS 353 

back to Yasnaya where everything would remind her of 
the dear little fellow. It was therefore planned to go 
abroad, but the intimation was conveyed to them that 
though Tolstoi would not be prevented from going he 
would probably not be allowed to return. He himself was 
ill and had to undergo a slight operation, so that they did 
not move to Yasnaya until June. He wrote to Feiner- 
mann, who had heard that he was going abroad to escape 
arrest, that it was not because of any possibility of persecu- 
tion. " Sinner that I am," he said, "I desire persecution 
and have to restrain myself not to provoke it. But it 
seems that I am not worthy of it and shall have to die 
without having lived even approximately, or even tem- 
porarily, in the way I consider it right to live, and that it 
will not be my lot to be a witness to the truth by any 
suffering." 

After telling the real reason for their thought of going 
abroad he said, "If eel with every nerve of my body the 
truth of the words that a man and his wife are not separate 
entities, but one;" and he expressed his keen sorrow at 
not being able to give her a part of the religious consola- 
tion which his faith gave him. "I know," he said, 
"that women have great difficulty in attaining this." 

In spite of the great grief at the loss of "little Va- 
nitchka," he wrote his beautiful story of self-sacrifice, 
"Master and Man" — a most characteristic and artistic- 
ally perfect piece of narration; also the folk-tales, "Three 
Parables." It was noticed by those who talked with him 
that his memory was full of quaint and fascinating Orien- 
tal legends, like the story of "Justice and Injustice," "The 
Rich Miser," and the parable of "The Caravanserai." 
His conversation, like Christ's, was illuminated by these 
simple and exquisite little stories. 

He also protested against the newly legalized practice 
of flogging peasants. His article was entitled "Shame!" 

This year Tolstoi became the defender of the sect of 
Dukhobortsui, or Spirit Wrestlers, w T ho because of their 



354 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

repudiation of army service, were undergoing persecution. 
For fifty years they had resided in the Caucasus and for- 
getting their earlier principles became soldiers and held 
private property. In 1864 their leader, whom they be- 
lieved to be an incarnation of God, died, appointing his 
wife, Lukeriya Vasilyevna, as his successor. She took an 
earthly fancy to a handsome young man named Piotr 
Virigin, by her divine authority selected him for her 
successor, and separated him from his wife. One time 
he met his wife in Tiflis, and ^ukeriya went into a fit 
in consequence of it and died. There was doubt whether 
he had received the genuine apostolic succession, and the 
Dukhobors split into pro-Viriginites and anti-Viriginites. 
They appealed to the Russian authorities to settle the 
quarrel, which involved the right to the " Widow's House" 
and the property thereto attached. The decision went 
against Virigin and he was banished to Lapland. There he 
got hold of Tolstoi's writings and adopted their teachings. 
As he was in secret touch with the pro-Viriginites, he 
instructed them to return to the doctrine of non-resistance, 
to cease possessing private property and to hold every- 
thing in common, to abstain from intoxicants and nar- 
cotics, and to become vegetarians; he went so far in follow- 
ing Tolstoi into his later vagaries that he bade them 
refrain from marital relations, at least during their "time 
of tribulation." 

The government regarded Virigin as a trouble-maker 
and removed him from the Lapland of comparative luxury 
to Obd6rsk in northern Siberia. 

Three of his followers came to Moscow to see him on 
his way. Tolstoi met them and was persuaded that they 
were a people who actually realized the ideal toward 
which he and his followers were striving. He declared 
that what was taking place among them was " the germi- 
nation of the seed sown by Christ himself eighteen hun- 
dred and eighty years ago." 

In July, 1895, on the eve of Virigin's name-day, the 



THE DUKHOBORS 355 

Dukhobors in accordance with his instructions with one 
accord burned their arms. While engaged in this holy 
cause they were attacked by Cossacks and cruelly flogged. 
The persecution that followed resulted in the banishment 
and death of hundreds from exposure and starvation. 

Tolstoi and his friend Count Tchertkof sent Piotr 
Ivanovitch Biryukof to the Caucasus to collect all the 
facts. Biryukof is said to have contented himself with 
reporting what the Pro-Viriginites told him and did not 
consult with their opponents, who were in turn perse- 
cuted by the other faction. 

On his return to Moscow Biryukof together with Tchert- 
kof and another strong Tolstoian, Tregubof, issued an 
appeal for help, urging that the Dukhobors based their 
relations to all men and to all creatures on love. This 
idea of equality they applied to the government authori- 
ties and did not consider obedience binding upon them 
if the demands of the authorities conflicted with their 
consciences; though in all things not infringing the will 
of God, as they understood it, they were willingly 
obedient. "Help!" was published in December, 1896. 
Its authors were immediately banished: Biryukof and 
Tregubof to small towns in the Baltic provinces, and 
Tchertkof, who had court influence, was permitted to 
go to England. 

Virigin took advantage of his power as vicegerent of the 
Almighty to constrain his followers to give up the use of 
metals; he urged that the writing and printing of books 
was harmful, since the books themselves were often 
deleterious and the expense and labor involved in their 
production might be better spent in furnishing food and 
shelter for the needy; he also recommended setting horses 
and cattle free from the slavery of man and ceasing to 
spoil the earth by tillage. 

Virigin's letters were regarded by his followers as 
special revelations and that explains why, when through 
the benevolence of kindly people and the acquiescence of 



358 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

him to his room and after reading some of his verses told 
him: "There is nothing original here, and besides every 
one writes poems nowadays. Hundreds and hundreds of 
people are producing them and not one of them writes a 
single good line. In the days of Pushkin and Lermontof 
there was good poetry, but not now. Poetry has gone 
out of fashion. Besides, what is the good of it? You 
must agree that prose expresses our thoughts much better 
— it is easier to read and has more sense in it. Take our 
talk, for instance; we say what we wish. But if some one 
tried to put it into verse, it would come out topsy-turvy. 
Wherever a definite clear expression is wanted it either 
spoils the rhythm or the needed rhyme spoils the sense; 
one has to substitute some other word, often far from the 
real meaning." 

In the same way when Tolstoi's attention was called 
to some of Matthew Arnold's most beautiful poems, he 
remarked what a pity it was they were not written in 
prose! 

Pozdnyak6f had been an employe in a factory, he had 
served as a house-porter, as a carter, and as laundryman. 
Tolstoi advised him to return to his work. This dis- 
couraging reception and various other disappointments 
drove the young fellow, who was only twenty, to the 
verge of suicide. He drifted back to his village, how- 
ever, and there taking Tolstoi's advice won success in 
prose tales dealing with peasant life and thought. 

The novelist Anton Tchekhof came to see him and 
was well received. Tolstoi recognized his ability as an 
artist in words, though he regretted that his works ex- 
pressed no clear philosophy of life. One day Tolstoi re- 
marked to him: "You are a right good fellow and I 
am very fond of you. As you know, I can't bear Shake- 
speare, yet his plays are better than yours." 

His dislike of Shakespeare led him at the age of 
seventy-five to write an essay on " Shakespeare and the 
Drama." In order to prepare for it, he read all of the 





Count and Countess Tolstoi in 1895. 



THE DUKHOBORS 359 

dramas and came to the conclusion that they were repul- 
sive, wearisome, and bewildering. He declared that 
Shakespeare's characters constantly do and say what is 
not only unnatural to them but utterly unnecessary, and 
he thought the subjects of his pieces represented the 
lowest and vulgarest view of life. 



XVI 

TOLSTOI AND ART 

A curious instance of the manner in which the Church 
authorities waged war on Tolstoi* came to his notice this 
year. It was a pamphlet printed under the auspices of 
the Holy Synod and bearing a title which might be 
taken to mean "The Fruits of Teaching" of Count 
L. N. Tolstoi or by Count L. N. Tolstoi. It was 
everywhere sold on the streets and people bought it, 
thinking it was a sort of companion to his "Fruits 
of Enlightenment.' ' It contained a bitter attack on 
Tolstoi and emphasized the insinuation of Father 
Iv£n of Riga that Tolstoi was insane. This same 
Father Ivan, when nominated by the University of 
Dorpat to receive an honorary degree, together with 
Tolstoi, declined it, declaring that he did not wish 
to be in the same category with an infidel! He 
was shrewd enough to realize that this was an excellent 
advertisement. The Pan-Russian Missionary Congress, 
held a little later, proclaimed Tolstoism to be a definite 
and harmful sect and in consequence he received threat- 
ening letters, declaring that his pernicious activity had 
worn out the patience of the Church militant and it had 
been decided to kill him before April 15, 1898. 

In July of this year, Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, 
Chicago, with her niece visited at Yasnaya Polyana. 
When they arrived they found that Tolstoi had gone to 
Tula at the request of an American who previously 
had agreed to take some letters to Prince Khilkof, then 
in banishment. Tolstoi had hoped to receive a reply 
from Khilkdf, but the American, instead of delivering 

360 



TOLSTOI AND ART 361 

Tolstoi's correspondence directly to the prince, had allowed 
it to be taken by the Russian officials, who opened it and 
refused to let it be delivered. The rather audacious sum- 
mons of the American visitor, who had not hesitated to 
make sport of Tolstoi's vegetarian principles, and the 
long and fruitless drive to Tula and back did not affect 
the count's temper, and he was ready for a walk down to 
the river. On the way Miss Addams told him of her work 
and the conditions of the poor in Chicago. Tolstoi touched 
the loose, fluffy sleeve of her silk gown and remarked 
that there was enough stuff in it to make a frock for a 
little girl, and asked her if she did not find such a dress a 
barrier to the people. Miss Addams replied that the 
people among whom she worked liked to see her well 
dressed. He retorted that she ought not to be dressed 
differently from them. Miss Addams laughingly replied 
that it would be difficult to adopt the costumes of all the 
thirty-six different nationalities there represented. To 
this Tolstoi said: "All the more reason why you should 
choose some cheap and simple dress that any of them 
might adopt and no* cut yourself off by your costume 
from those you wish i*o serve." 

Miss Addams's impressions of Tolstoi may be read in 
her book. She was deeply influenced by the life, the 
gentleness, the Christfdiiity in the soul of the man. When 
she returned to Hull House she resolved to follow his 
teaching to the extent of working some hours each day 
in the bakery, but her practical common sense soon 
taught her that this was a waste of her energies, which 
could be better spent in other things. 

An amusing instance of Tolstoi's own difficulty in 
carrying out his theories as regards luxurious habits 
happened when at one time he went to call on Prince 
Urusof. The prince was away but the Chief of the 
District Police offered him every attention and accom- 
panied him to the station, insisting on purchasing his 
ticket for him. Tolstoi had not the courage to say 



362 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

" Third class," but told him to get a second-class ticket. 

S. Persky relates an incident that happened when Tolstoi 
was at a railroad station as a train pulled in. A gentleman 
left the first-class coach and hastened to the buffet. His 
wife wanted to call him back. " Georges! Georges!" she 
cried in French, but " Georges" had vanished. Then 
she caught sight of Tolstoi' in his muzhik-costume: "H£! 
there, Dyedushka, " she commanded, "run quick and tell 
that gentleman to come back. I will give you a tip." 

Tolstoi brought back the husband and received a five- 
kopek piece. A moment later she heard some one cry : 
"Look, there's Tolstoi!" 

"Where, where?" asked the lady, and when he was 
pointed out she hastened to him, saying, "Pardon me, 
Count! I am mortified!" and begged him to give back 
the coin. "No, no, I will keep it," he said, smiling, "I 
earned it." 

Tolstoi had been for years interested in various forms 
of art, and at last he bent his energies to the task of writing 
a treatise which should express his mature judgment. 
His definition is that art is a human activity, whereby a 
man consciously, using external signs, communicates to 
others the feelings which he has experienced, so that 
they also experience them. L 

Art does not exist for its own 'sake, he argues, but is 
valuable or meretricious in proportion to the good or the 
evil it does mankind. Feelings are its subject-matter; 
they are communicated from one person to another and 
it is extremely important what those feelings are. Art 
unites men, and the better the art the better it is for 
humanity. Therefore the connection between art and 
morals should be recognized by all men. He prophesies 
that in the future the person who composes a fairy-tale, 
a touching song, a lullaby, an entertaining riddle, an amus- 
ing jest, or makes a sketch which will delight dozens of 
generations, millions of children and adults, will be 
incomparably more important and more fruitful than 



TOLSTOI AND ART 363 

one who produces a novel or a symphony or a picture to 
divert the members of the wealthy classes for a short 
time and then be forgotten. 

True as the first part of his comparison is — for many 
a simple poem contains more in it than literature vastly 
larger in dimensions — it would seem to be also true that 
Tolstoi entirely neglects the possibility that through edu- 
cation the human race may be lifted to a degree where 
the great novel, the great symphony or the great paint- 
ing will appeal to every one. 

He speaks with scorn of the "half-barbarous" Greeks 
and their nude statues; but nevertheless at the Olympic 
Games thousands of the common people of that day met 
to listen to dramas which have been models for two 
thousand years. 

"What is Art?" is one of the most stimulating of all 
Tolstoi's ethical writings. His criticisms of musicians, 
authors, and painters are extremely entertaining and 
there is no question that the general argument is sound. 
It was abominably mutilated by the censor, and the only 
version of it that at all represents what Tolstoi wrote is 
the English translation, which had the advantage of his 
careful revision. He wrote for it a special preface ask- 
ing all who should be interested in his views on the 
subject to judge of them by the work in its English 
text. 

He went on to say that contrary to his later practice — 
of not allowing his works to be submitted to the censor — 
he had allowed his friend Professor Grot to print it in 
the magazine that he edited on condition that he would 
get it through the censor's office unmutilated, merely 
toning down a few very unimportant expressions. When 
it appeared Tolstoi found that not only were such words 
as "always" replaced by "sometimes," "all" by 
"some," "Church religion" by "Roman Catholic 
religion"; but his disapproval of luxurious life was made 
to apply not to the time of Nicholas II. but to that of 



364 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

the Caesars. Finally the ecclesiastical censor, who, 
Tolstoi' says, probably understood art and was inter- 
ested in it as much as Tolstoi was interested in church 
services, got hold of the manuscript and completely 
garbled it, so that the book appeared under Tolstoi's 
name with thoughts that were not his. 

A great deal of the criticism is delightfully satirical and 
justified; but as one might suspect, Tolstoi goes too far, 
including with decadents, impressionists, and symbolists 
"the meaningless works of the ancient Greeks," — Sopho- 
cles, Euripides, ^Eschylus and especially Aristophanes, 
Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Raphael, Michael Angelo, 
Bach and Beethoven, and, of late years, Ibsen, Maeter- 
linck, Verlaine, Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz, Brahms, Richard 
Strauss and "all that immense mass of good-for-nothing 
imitators of those imitators!" He attributes all the evil 
of these false artists to the critics. As a preparation for 
writing the book Tolstoi* went to the theater to see plays 
and operas, and he read an immense amount of literature 
in different languages. As he criticised these produc- 
tions with an arriere pensee, his judgment is more 
amusing than convincing. His comical description of a 
Wagner opera makes one laugh; but one might just as 
well go up close to a painting and make fun of the 
blotches of paint; out of focus they are meaningless, 
but at a proper distance they blend into harmonious 
completeness and give the impression, that the painter 
intended to convey. Every opera and every play is 
ludicrous, if one is not in the atmosphere of it. So that 
when Tolstoi compares the celebrated novels of Zola, 
Paul Bourget, Huysmans and Kipling with a child's 
story by an unknown author to the advantage of the 
latter, one must make allowances for the personal 
equation and the mood of the moment. 

Yet his attempt to present a criterion of art deserves 
respect, and one can scarcely quarrel with his constructive 
appreciation of Schiller's "Robbers," Victor Hugo's 



TOLSTOI AND ART 365 



tt 



Les Mis6rables," Dickens's novels, " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin/' Dostoyevsky's works and "Adam Bede," or the 
few pieces of music (Chopin's E-flat major nocturne 
among them) which he tentatively mentions. As is well 
known, he relegated his own artistic productions to the 
category of bad art, with the exception of " God Sees the 
Truth" and "The Prisoner in the Caucasus." 

It is odd that he speaks as respectfully as he does of 
11 Don Quixote, " for assuredly in spite of certain passages 
Cervantes's treatment of a poor half-insane old knight 
seems calculated to inculcate cruelty and may be in no 
small measure responsible for the fact that Spain still 
permits bull-fighting as its national amusement. 

One would suppose that Nietzsche would find little 
favor in his eyes. But Tolstoi was absolutely charmed 
by the vigor and beauty of Nietzsche's language and 
so carried away that he quite forgot himself; he especially 
liked the way that Nietzsche gave Christianity its coup 
de grace. 

For fifteen years, off and on, beginning seven times or 
more, Tolstoi occupied himself with the formulation of 
his treatise on art — with certainly a noble purpose and 
with the highest ideal of what art should teach. Because 
one may not agree with all his statements or accept all 
his conclusions, one may yet be fair to him and recognize 
the vast amount of good that such a work is sure to 
accomplish — if in nothing else than holding up sim- 
plicity, sincerity, and morality as among the chief 
handmaidens of art. 

The persecution of the Dukhobors still continued, 
and at last in 1898, after opposing many difficulties, the 
Russian Government gave permission that those that 
desired, with the exception of such as were conscripted 
for the army and a certain number condemned to exile, 
might emigrate to Canada, where a lot of vacant land 
was put at their disposal. Ships were sent to Batum, 
where Prince Galitsuin facilitated Count Sergye'i Lvovitch 



366 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Tolstoi in embarking the eight thousand who had 
elected to expatriate themselves. 

To carry these emigrants a distance almost a quarter 
around the world money was required, although very 
advantageous terms were made. Tolstoi broke his rule 
and at the end of 1899 allowed "Resurrection" (Vos- 
kresenye), his new novel "in his former style" as he 
called it, to be printed for a monetary consideration and 
devoted the proceeds to this philanthropic work. It 
brought in twenty-two thousand rubles. A translation 
of it was begun in an American magazine, but its out- 
spokenness regarding matters sexual caused its suppres- 
sion. In England it was for a time regarded askance, 
but after it was dramatized with great success, it began 
to have a large sale, the proceeds of which, amounting 
to almost as much as it brought in Russia, were also 
generously given to assist the Dukhobors, and for other 
public purposes. 

Its hero bears the name of Nekhlyudof, who had so 
often in his earlier works stood for himself. And the 
behavior of that hero is what Tolstoi would have himself 
exemplified in similar circumstances. It is not auto- 
biographical, but rather a projection of his own soul as 
redeemed by his theories. 

Its pictures of Russian official life, its fearless exposure 
of rottenness in high places, its denunciation of the cring- 
ing Church — to say nothing of its tremendous indictment 
of Pobyedonostsef, show no falling off in its author's 
abilities. It is one of the great novels of the world. 



PART V 

THE EXCOMMUNICATED TEACHER 

I 

TOLSTOI AND THE HOLY SYNOD 

During the last two years of the nineteenth century, 
Tolstoi' continued his literary activities. He contributed 
a preface to his son Count Sergyei's translation of Edward 
Carpenter's "Modern Science, " he wrote a number of 
vigorous letters regarding Russian famine and other 
phenomena of the times. When the Emperor Nicholas II. 
summoned th first Conference at The Hague, Tolstoi 
attacked it violently, calling it a hypocritical affair, not 
directed to bring about peace but rather to obscure the 
only path that could lead to peace. "Armies," he said, 
" will first decrease and then vanish, as soon as public 
opinion brands with its contempt those w T ho, whether 
from fear or for profit, sell their liberty and join the ranks 
of those murderers called soldiers." 

He also wrote an open letter on the Boer War. 

As the last year of the century wore on his health grew 
precarious, and the Holy Synod sent out a confidential 
circular to the clergy decreeing that the performances 
of requiems, masses, and liturgies for the repose of his 
soul, in the event of his dying unrepentant, should be 
forbidden. This was on the ground that he had plainly 
shown himself to be an enemy of the Orthodox Church. 

His illness did not prevent him from writing letters and 
he brought out his treatise "The Slavery of our Time" — ■ 

367 



368 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

a sequel to "What is to be Done?" — still further eluci- 
dating his doctrine of non-resistance. 

The winter months of 1900 and 1901 were marked 
by disturbances in nearly all the Russian universities, 
the students revolting against the interference of the civil 
authorities with the teaching furnished by the professors. 
The organ of the students — Soyuzny Sovyet — expressed 
their desires: "We wish to follow the laws, we wish to 
do what is right, and we wish true freedom of science, but 
it must be independent of the caprices and whims of 
every stupid person. We do not wish to engage in hand- 
to-hand struggles with those who yesterday sent Cossacks 
and soldiers against us, with those who maybe will send 
them to-morrow." 

There was apparently no attempt to treat these students 
reasonably, but their manifestat ons, however harmless, 
were regarded as insurrections and were ruthlessly 
suppressed by the military. Many were killed, many 
were exiled, and in the melees that took place in Peters- 
burg, Moscow, Kief, and other university cities, innocent 
women and children were trampled by the cavalry or 
were killed* and wounded by careless shooting. 

There were street demonstrations also, which were no 
less ruthlessly broken up by violence and bloodshed. 
Some of the universities were closed, and the relations 
between the "intelligentsia" and the authorities became 
more and more strained. Protests were everywhere 
made in the form of resolutions. In some cases those 
who signed them were arrested. The sympathy of the 
learned world was aroused and forty professors connected 
with colleges, universities, and other educational in- 
stitutions in Great Britain and Ireland expressed their 
reprobation of the arbitrary actions of the Russian 
Government. 

In the midst of this excitement, in the early days of 
March, the Holy Synod issued a public anathema 
against Tolstoi*. It began with an encouraging affirma- 



TOLSTOI AND THE HOLY SYNOD 369 

tion that all the forces of hell should not prevail against 
the eternally founded Church of Christ. It informed the 
faithful children of the Orthodox Graeco-Russian Church 
that God had permitted a new false teacher to appear. 
Well known as a writer, Russian by birth, orthodox by 
baptism and education, and seduced by his pride of 
intellect, this insolent Count Tolstoi had repudiated the 
Mother Church which had reared and trained him. He 
was now disseminating among the people teachings re- 
pugnant to Christ and the Church. It went on in a 
sentence of one hundred and twenty-seven words — almost 
twice as many would be required in English — to re- 
hearse his heresies, and then threatened him with excom- 
munication unless he should repent and reenter the 
communion. It was signed by the metropolitans of Pe- 
tersburg, Moscow, Kief, the Archbishop of Warsaw, and 
three bishops, all of whom prefixed the word " smirenny" 
" humble," to their names! 

This thunderbolt was more crushing to the countess 
than to Tolstoi. Without his knowledge, she imme- 
diately addressed a letter to the Ober-prokurdr of the 
Synod and to the metropolitans. 

She began by saying that she had read in the dailies 
the cruel communication of the Synod, depriving her 
husband of the privileges of the Church, and there were no 
bounds to her indignation. The life of a human soul 
from the religious point of view was fortunately indepen- 
dent of any other person, she said, but from the point 
of view of that Church to which she belonged and from 
which she should never secede, which was created by 
Christ in order to hallow in God's name all the most 
significant moments of human life — birth, marriage, 
death, the joys and sorrows of men — which is in duty 
bound to proclaim loudly the law of love, universal for- 
giveness, love for enemies, for those that hate us, and 
to pray for all men — from this point of view, the decree 
of the Synod was incomprehensible to her. 



37o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

" It will call forth not the approval (except in the case 
of the Moscow Vyedomosti) but the indignation of 
men and will evoke great love and sympathy for Lyof 
Nikolayevitch. 

"I cannot forget the anguish I experienced at that 
absurdity about which I recently heard, namely the 
Synod's secret order to the clergy not to perform the 
church burial service for Ly6f Nikolayevitch in case of 
his death. Whom is this meant to punish? The dead 
man who no longer has feelings, or his relatives, those 
who are believers? If this is a threat, then against 
whom and to what end ? 

"Is it possible that I should not find to perform the 
service over my husband and to pray for him in the 
church either a reputable priest who has no fear of men 
in the presence of the God of Love, or a disreputable 
priest who could be bribed by a goodly sum of money 
to do this? But for me this is not necessary. For me 
the Church is an abstract conception and I acknowl- 
edge as its servants only those who truly comprehend 
the meaning of the Church. If we must recognize as 
the Church those people who dare in their wickedness 
to transgress Christ's supreme law of love, it is time for all 
of us who truly believe and attend the Church to leave it. 

"And those who are to blame for sinful secession 
from the Church are not mistaken truth-seekers, but 
rather those who in pride set themselves up at its head 
and instead of manifesting love, humility, and forgiveness 
become the spiritual persecutors of those whom God more 
truly pardons because of their humble lives full of renun- 
ciations of earthly advantages, full of love and of help- 
fulness to their fellows, even though they be outside of 
the Church, rather than those who wear diamond-studded 
miters and stars but drive out of the Church its shepherds. 

"To refute my words with hypocritical arguments is 
easy. But the profound understanding of the truth and 
of the actual purposes of men deceives no one." 



TOLSTOI AND THE HOLY SYNOD 371 

The decree and the countess's letter caused a sensation. 
People took sides; fanatics threatened to kill the prophet; 
his books were excluded from public libraries; demonstra- 
tions of sympathy occurred, but the newspapers were 
forbidden to mention them. Sermons were as before 
preached against him and a Moscow temperance society 
expelled him from membership. All sorts of stories were 
circulated and people were led to believe that he was 
expelled from the Church because, having written that 
marriage was unnecessary and that children were born 
for destruction, he himself was the father of a child in 
his advancing years and had been punished for breaking 
his own rule. 

The censor forbade one of the newspapers to reproduce 
his picture, and Ryepin's new portrait of him, which was 
in a Petersburg gallery, having been decorated with 
flowers by the public was ordered removed from the 
exhibition. 

He received countless letters and telegrams, but none 
touched him more than an address from the workmen 
of the Prokorovsky factory who, as representatives of the 
Russian common people, simple laborers, assured him of 
their sympathy and, declaring that they were as truly 
Christians as the haughty self-constituted directors of the 
Church, found in his writings plain and simple directions 
for entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. " Did not our 
great Teacher for the same reason suffer on the Cross ?" 

Many young people, in consequence of the ridiculous 
action of the Synod, voluntarily separated from the 
Church. 

Tolstoi wrote a dignified and noble letter in reply to 
the false statements promulgated by the Synod, answering 
in detail all of the charges against him. He put at the 
head of it Coleridge's dictum : " He who begins by loving 
Christianity better than truth will proceed by loving his 
own sect or church better than Christianity and end in 
loving himself better than all." 



372 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

He said he had gone the opposite way by loving his 
orthodox belief more than his peace of mind; then he 
loved Christianity more than his church; and finally he 
loved truth more than anything else in the world. 

That truth he formulated in the passage which said: 

"I believe in God whom I understand as a Spirit, as 
Love, as the source of all. I believe that He is in me 
and I in Him. 

" I believe that God's will is expressed more clearly 
and intelligibly than anywhere else in the teaching of the 
man Christ, whom to consider as God and pray to I 
regard as the greatest blasphemy. 

" I believe that man's true welfare consists in fulfilling 
the will of God and that His will is that men should love 
one another and consequently should do unto others as 
they would wish men to do unto them, just as it says in 
the Gospels that in this is all the law and the prophets. 

"I believe that the meaning of every man's life, there- 
fore, lies in increasing love within him; that this increase 
of love leads every man to ever greater and greater 
blessedness in this life; gives him after death greater 
blessedness according as love was in him and at the same 
time helps more than anything else to establish the 
Kingdom of God on earth; that is to the establishment 
of an order of life in which truth and fraternal love will 
replace by free consent the discord, deception, and 
violence now prevalent. 

"I believe that for progress in love there is only one 
means — prayer — not public prayer in churches directly 
forbidden by Christ (Matthew vi. 5-13), but the soli- 
tary prayer of which Christ gave us a pattern, consist- 
ing in the renewal and strengthening in our own con- 
sciousness of the meaning of life and of our dependence 
on the will of God alone." 

He went on to say that, even though they offended, 
grieved, or displeased others, he could not change those 
beliefs of his any more than he could change his body. 





AypaKOBX. Hto-kt., nponajaTB Tarn, bh 3a iv$t^ 

^tCHre B. k ' l JlUUldJ I ,! ! B JM 0TBJI3UM T L ' ms^ 

jomaat, Joajj nepeKUHyjn. noBOAifHa weio a xorfcjrB bcko\ ^Zfa&T&w 
Hee, ho copBaaca. Tor^a obi BCTajrt Ha caHH a xoita ci. ca-V / 
nefl ctcTB. Ho caHH noKaiHyjiHci no^i ero TasecTba h ohi ohhtb otfop-^- 
Bams. HaBOHeuT. bi Tperifl pa3i ohi ohhtb noABHHyjif jiouiaAb ki caHHMi, 
CTajii na EpaB an, 11 cxtJiaBi yemiie bckoihjit. TaEf., ito Jierc, tfproxoMi 
nonepeKi chhhh jioma,p. Ilo.iesani xaict, oht> nocyHyjica Bnepcyy> 
iHegi. nepesHHyji^ nory qepe3^ CHHHy jomajHJ /^npaBiii 
'^^noTflHyjt 3a oflHHfr noBo gi^eSg i- * T * 

HHKHTa ci Ttxt nop*, nasi cta^noKpHBmi 
«omi caHefi, chjI**- HenoABHKHO. Mucjib o tomi, ito oht> Moatei'b.n jaae 
no bcbmi B'BpoflTiaii'b .nojiKem, yuepen. bt> 9tj hoib, npnaiJia eMy bt> 
to BpeHH, KOixa obt, ycasuBajicJi 3a caaaMB^XoTfl eiwy eme (Shjio tmuio, 
noTOMy qro obi BHoro ABBrajica, aa3DJii n<T cyrpotfaiut, ho ohi ZBznt, I 
ito Tenia 9Toro XBaTHTi He na flojiro, a ito corptsaTtca ABH»«Hiein- \ 
ohi y«e Sy^en. ne bi CMaxi, noTOMy ito iyBCTBOBajr& ceoa chjmo ym- 
jihhi. BpoM'B Toro, OAHa Bora ero bt> npopBaHHOMi canort ^CTbiaa h ohi. 
y«e He lygji Ha eefl ooraioro naatna, n nnii ijnirrnnr — "'^ 

Y i ^ T —»i j l/SuiA npnanaiumm i. i i l i j . ^ i i.mi ■ ■ I 

^ \ - " ^ fa £?&**' 





TOLSTOI AND THE HOLY SYNOD 373 

"I must live my own life," he said, "and so must I die 
(and very soon), and therefore I cannot believe otherwise 
than as I believe, making ready to go to that God from 
whom I came. I do not believe that my belief is the one 
indubitable truth for all time, but I see none other that 
is simpler, clearer, or more perfectly answers all the 
demands of my intellect and of my heart. Should I 
find such an one, I would instantly accept it. God 
requires nothing but the truth. I can never again 
return to what I escaped from with such sufferings 
any more than the flying bird can reenter the egg from 
which it has emerged." 

Not since the defense of Socrates has a sincerer or 
more convincing reply to a man's judges been pronounced 
than this of Tolstoi's, and how the Pharisees of the Most 
Holy Synod could read it without remembering the Man 
of Galilee passes all comprehension. 



n 

POPULAR OVATIONS 

Owing to the disturbances in the universities, the decree 
of excommunication did not attract so much attention as 
it would otherwise have done. 

Tolstoi was in Moscow at the time and wherever he 
appeared he was the object of unexampled interest and 
awakened tremendous enthusiasm. 

A friend who happened to be with him one day de- 
scribes the ovations that he received in the streets when 
he was recognized. 

As he passed by the University in the afternoon he was 
at first greeted most respectfully, then little groups of 
people began to follow him, until such a crowd had 
gathered that it was feared that the police might descend 
upon them or the Cossacks with their nagaikas or loaded 
whips. 

A tiny woman ran along beside him in great excite- 
ment and explained that she must speak to him, and she 
told him how they had been beating the students; but it 
seemed to Tolstoi that she exaggerated the bad conduct 
of the police and he tried to calm her in a very kindly 
and gentle manner. 

By the time he had reached the Teatralny Square 
the crowd had increased to several hundreds, and when 
he and his friend started to cross it they found it literally 
packed with people. They managed to slip away un- 
observed, but on the Myasnitskaya he was again recog- 
nized and followed by an ever increasing throng. 

Some one, probably with ironical reference to the pro- 
nunciamento of the Holy Synod, shouted out at the top of 

374 



POPULAR OVATIONS 375 

his voice : " There is the Devil in human form ! " and those 
words served as the signal for an ovation. Shouts were 
heard on all sides — " Hurrah! Tolstoi! Long life to 
Tostoi!" A student ran forward and cried to every one 
he met: "Boys, this way! Ly6f Nikolayevitch is here!" 

A moment later and the enormous throng on the square 
began to flow and rush toward him as to a center, shout- 
ing, waving their hats and expressing their enthusiasm 
in every extravagant manner. 

It was becoming not only embarrassing but also some- 
what dangerous, and Tolstoi said to his friend, " Where 
can we go?" 

An izvoshchik was stationed not far away and Tolstoi's 
friend was just about to signal to him, when the driver, 
seeing the crowd, whipped up his horse and fled with- 
out looking back. So they almost ran to the Little 
Theater, but the crowd again closed in on them and they 
found it impossible to get within a hundred steps of a 
cab — the drivers were all seized with a panic at the sight 
of the crowd. On Neglinniya Street they got an 
izvoshchik, but before they could climb into the sleigh 
the students flocked around and tried to stand on the 
runners and clung to the robes and climbed up beside the 
driver. However, when they were politely asked to jump 
off they immediately did so; yet when at last the izvosh- 
chik cracked his whip and started away the crowd fol- 
lowed running, shouting, and waving their hats. 

The shouts attracted the attention of the gendarmes, 
and down from the Kuznetsky Bridge a detachment 
came at a gallop. But the commander apparently 
recognized Tolstoi and ordered his men to let him pass 
and then close ranks. When they looked back they saw 
that the whole street was black with people and the 
police were trying to disperse them. 

Tolstoi was both touched and terrified at the spectacle. 
It was terrifying because if he had slipped he might 
have been crushed by the throng, and touching because 



376 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

of the universal enthusiasm which seemed a popular 
rebuke to the stupid administrators of the Church which 
tried to pillory a man of such character and fame. 

Tolstoi himself laughed good-naturedly at the decree 
of the Synod, saying that while they boasted their courage 
against the gates of hell yet they trembled before a 
retired lieutenant of artillery. 

When he reached his house on the Khamovniki he 
found a vast heap of letters and telegrams offering 
sympathy and assistance. Before dinner a deputation 
of ladies appeared, who were introduced to Tolstoi' by 
name. After dinner a throng of students gathered, and 
Tolstoi sent word to them that he would be glad to receive 
them but begged them not to make any disturbance and 
not to greet him with cheers. 

He then went out into the court-yard and for twenty 
minutes he spoke to the throng, which consisted of about 
a hundred students, young women and working-people. 
Everything went off very pleasantly and quietly and 
every one felt that atmosphere of dignity and respect 
which he always inspired. He had not been five minutes 
in the house before a pristaf or police commissioner and 
two other officers — okolototchnniye — and eleven common 
policemen made their appearance, but all the students 
had disappeared. 

Tolstoi took an active part in the protests against the 
inhumane and stupid treatment of the students, and as 
a member of the Guild of Russian Writers sent the 
following address : — 

" With genuine concern we have learned of the brutal 
behavior of the police on the seventeenth of March and 
the consequent declaration of the Guild of Russian 
Writers. That declaration involves the dissolution of the 
Guild. We feel that this action will be advantageous 
rather than injurious for those ends which are dear to 
Russian writers. By causing our dissolution the Govern- 
ment acknowledged itself in the wrong and not as being 



POPULAR OVATIONS 377 

in condition to justify its lawless and despotic actions; 
it performs still another act of violence and by this very 
act still more weakens it and magnifies the natural in- 
fluence of the Society that is contending with it. And 
therefore we are with all our hearts grateful to you for 
what you have done and we hope that your activity in 
spite of the violent dissolution of the Guild will not be 
diminished but will increase and go on in that direction 
of freedom and enlightenment in which it has always ex- 
erted itself among our best Russian writers." 

On Count Tolstoi's initiative a letter of sympathy and 
commendation w r as sent to Lieutenant- General Prince 
Leonid Dmitrievitch Vy£zemsky for his manly and noble 
protest against the massacre of March 16 and 17, which 
had brought upon him the stern reproof of the Emperor. 

Finally Tolstoi wrote his open letter to the Emperor 
and those who were so culpably deceiving him. It 
began: — 

(March 28, 1901) 

"Again murders, again bloodshed, again punishments, 
again apprehension, terror, charges and accusations, 
threats and irritation, on the one hand, and on the other 
hatred, desire for vengeance, and readiness for sacrifice. 
Again all the Russian people are divided into two hostile 
camps and are preparing and are waiting to commit 
great crimes.' ' 

After pointing out the reasons for the disturbances he 
showed how simple it would be to quiet them : — 

(a) In the first place — give the peasants the same rights 
as all the other citizens and then abolish special enact- 
ments enabling the Common Law to be overridden; 

(b) Liberty of education, and most important of all, 

(c) Religious liberty. 

He went on to say that such were the modest and easily 
realizable desires of the majority of the Russian people. 
Their adoption would undoubtedly pacify the people and 
free them from the terrible sufferings and crimes which 



378 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

would be inevitably committed on both sides if the Govern- 
ment should concern itself only with the suppression of 
the disturbances, leaving their cause. 

The letter ended : — 

"Lyof Tolstoi has written this, and in writing it has 
striven to expound not his own opinion but the opinion 
of many of the best, the kindest, the most disinterested, 
reasonable, and peace-loving people, who all desire the 
same thing.' ' 



Ill 

A WINTER IN THE CRIMEA 

The excitement of all these events had a bad effect on 
Tolstoi's health. In June, 1901, he made a visit to his 
eldest daughter, who had married M. S. Sukhotm two 
years before. The estate, situated beyond Orel,* 
was ten miles from the railway. On the day of his 
return to the station he insisted on walking and would 
not permit any one to accompany him. He missed his 
way in the forest. A muzhik whom he asked to con- 
duct him to the road, refused, being afraid of wolves. 
Fortunately he managed to strike the road and was 
caught up by other members of the family who were 
driving to the station. He arrived there at night, ex- 
hausted and suffering. The train was crowded. He 
obstinately refused to ride first-class and there was no 
chance for him to lie down. At Orel a friend insisted 
on having a special coach coupled to the train. After 
reaching Yasnaya he was miserably ill; yet he wrote many 
letters, he worked on his article "The Only Means," 
dealing with the labor problem, and read or tried to 
read in Bulgarian the work of a young truth-seeker named 
Shopof, who pleased him by his earnestness. 

On the tenth of July the action of his heart became so 
irregular that the countess against his wishes sent to Tula 
for a doctor. He believed that physical sufferings were 
intended to free the spirit from subjection to the flesh, and 
purify it from the desires and passions of earth. He had 
a sinking spell but recovered from it. He said to his 
daughter: "The sleigh was at the door and I had only 

* Pronounced Aryol. 

379 



3 8o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

to get in and depart, then suddenly the horses turned 
round and the conveyance was sent away. It is a pity, 
for it was good sleighing and when I have to start again, 
it may be rough." 

By the middle of July his condition was more serious, 
and the friendly doctor from Moscow came and diag- 
nosed his case as angina pectoris. He recommended a 
warmer climate, and the Countess Panina offered him the 
use of her palace at Gaspra in the Crimea. Early in 
September, accompanied by the countess, two daughters, 
and some friends, he drove to Tula at night. It was ten 
o'clock when they reached the station. The roads were 
very rough and he was tired and ill. But Prince Khilkof , 
the Minister of Railways, furnished a special car so that 
he would be able to travel without change. In the morn- 
ing it was sunny and warm, and when the train reached 
Kharkdf, where a crowd collected to see him, he permitted 
a delegation of students to speak to him and he showed 
himself at the car window. 

He spent a day at Sevastopol and was able to go for a 
walk and visited the museum to see the relics of the war. 
He related reminiscences of the siege but was distressed 
to see his own portrait, and on the way back to the hotel 
remarked that it was a pity to use such an expensive 
building to store that collection "of splinters and but- 
tons." He thought that it made people remember the 
horror, savagery and shame of that war which had cost 
a half-million lives and countless millions of money. 

He was driven from Sevastopol to Yalta, and while they 
were changing horses on the road he walked ahead. He 
met a young man and inquired the name of some place on 
the shore below. As he was old and feeble and, as usual, 
dressed like a muzhik, the young man gave an insolent 
answer. A moment later the countess drove up and 
Tolstoi entered the carriage. 

" Who is that old man?" asked the young fellow of one 
of the party; and, when he was told, "What!" he ex- 




TCHEKOF AND COUNT TOLSTOI DURING THE CRIMEAN VlSIT. 



A WINTER IN THE CRIMEA 381 

claimed, flinging his cap down in the dust, "Count Tolstoi, 
the writer! Oh, Bozhe moi! Bozhe moi'! I would have 
given all I own to see him, and how I spoke to him!" 

At Gaspra the weather was delightful and as Tolstoi's 
health improved he again resumed his writing. He was 
still at work on his unfinished story, "Hadji-Murat," and 
on " What is Religion and in what Consists its Essence ?" 
He was roused to indignation by the unchristian advice 
about self-defense in General Dragomirof's "Soldier's 
Notes." 

Tchekof and Gorky were staying at Yalta near by, 
and he liked to see them. The pianist Goldenweiser 
came and played for him. 

When he was not feverish or suffering from rheumatism 
or pain in his heart he wrote letters, in which he liked to 
reiterate his rule of right living. He also worked — for in- 
stance on an article on "Religious Toleration." On the 
first of February he wrote a friend: "My physical 
health is wretched, but spiritually it is well with me and 
I am able to work and work, I think, more seriously in 
the presence of the approaching end." His idea of a 
useful life is expressed in another letter written from 
Gaspra, in which he tells of a paralytic monk living at the 
Optin Monastery. This man for more than thirty years 
had been able to use only his left hand; the doctor said 
that his sufferings must have been dreadful and yet he 
made no complaint, but constantly crossing himself, 
smilingly gazing at the ikons, he expressed his gratitude to 
God and his joy in the spark of life which glowed in him. 
Tolstoi thought that he did more good than thousands 
and thousands of healthy men who in various institu- 
tions imagine they are doing service to the world. 

He wrote a letter to the Emperor which is like one of the 
reproofs administered by an Isaiah to King Manasseh. 
He addressed him as "Dear Brother" and said he wrote 
as from the other world. He told him that autocracy was 
an obsolete form of government, such as might suit a 



382 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

people somewhere in central Africa but not the en- 
lightened Russian people, as was proved by the fact that 
it could be preserved, together with Orthodoxy, only by 
acts of violence, banishments by administrative process, 
executions, religious persecution, the prohibition of books 
and journals, the perversion of education, and all sorts of 
wicked and cruel deeds. He enumerated all the evil deeds 
of his reign — the regulations in regard to Finland, the 
project of a Hague Conference accompanied by an in- 
crease in the army, the restriction of self-government, the 
amplification of administrative tyranny, and his obstinacy 
in maintaining corporal punishment, so disgraceful to the 
Russian people. 

He called his attention to the modern idea that the only 
means of governing a people was for a ruler to make him- 
self a leader in their advance from darkness to light, from 
evil to good, and this could be accomplished only by letting 
them express their desires and needs and then fulfilling 
the demands of the majority of the people — of the working 
people. Those demands were the abolition of special 
laws which made paupers of the peasantry, freedom to 
go from one place to another, freedom of education, 
freedom of conscience, and freedom to use the land, private 
ownership of which should be abolished; but first of all 
the removal of the gag that prevented the people from ex- 
pressing its desires. "You cannot do good to a man 
whose mouth has been tied up lest what he wants should 
be spoken." 

On the last day of May, just before he left the Crimea 
to return home, he wrote his friend " Pasha" Biryukof, 
promising to aid him in writing his biography. Fearing 
the insincerity which he said was characteristic of every 
autobiography, he felt at first disinclined to contribute; 
but he had at last discovered a method of overcoming that 
difficulty and he promised that as soon as he was in a con- 
dition to write he would try to devote some hours to this 
work. 



A WINTER IN THE CRIMEA 383 

During his stay at Gaspra he had an attack of inflam- 
mation of the lungs. News that a doctor had gone to him 
from Moscow and that he was not expected to survive 
reached the Holy Synod ; and Pobyedonostsef issued secret 
instructions that if he died, a priest should immediately 
enter the palace, which contained a private chapel, and on 
coming out should make public announcement that 
Tolstoi had repented, returned to the Church, confessed, 
and received the Eucharist. This thoroughly Jesuitical 
lie was necessary to counteract the effect that Tolstoi's 
attitude and teaching were having on the minds of true 
believers. 

In May he suffered from an enteric fever but recovered 
sufficiently to make the homeward journey. He was taken 
to Sevastopol by steamer and while waiting for the train 
went into the garden attached to the station. An im- 
pulsive lady ordered him out, saying, "This garden be- 
longs to a high railway tchinovnik and is not the place for 
idle loafers." 

When this lady discovered that she had driven out the 
great Tolstoi she was to the last degree penitent and 
brought a bunch of flowers for him. " How could I tell 
that it was Tolstoi ?" she exclaimed in her despair. 

After his return to Yasnaya Polyana he consented to 
have a doctor in residence, but only on condition that the 
neighboring peasants might consult him freely. He was 
more reconciled to the profession when he found that 
injections of camphor had a stimulating effect on him 
and medicines really helped him. 

"Well, gentlemen," he said, "I have always spoken ill 
of doctors but now that I have come to know you better, 
I see that I have done you great injustice. You are really 
good and know all that your science teaches; the only, pity 
is that it knows nothing." 



IV 

LATER WRITINGS 

As he grew stronger he resumed his writing and 
finished a new play with the grewsome title, "Trup" — 
"The Corpse" — based on a true story. A drunkard had 
a wife who was in love with another man. He disap- 
peared in order to set her free. His clothes and pass- 
port were found on the bank of a river. But one day 
when drunk a man was heard boasting of being a corpse 
and his identity was discovered. He was arrested and 
sentenced to Siberia. 

One day Tolstoi received a call from a boy who said 
he was the " corpse's" son. Later the supposed corpse, 
who had returned from Siberia, appeared. Tolstoi sent 
him to Judge N. V. Davuidof , who had told him of the case. 
Davuidof secured him a small position in the Law Courts, 
where he served under an assumed name and never again 
betrayed himself. After this episode Tolstoi rewrote a 
part of the drama, so as to make it more favorable to 
the muzhik. 

It is rather odd to hear of Tolstoi playing cards for 
money; but one visitor says that he won almost a ruble 
and a half at "ving" in the course of two evenings. Not 
long before he had surprised a reverend gentleman from 
America by playing to him a waltz which he had com- 
posed in his gay Petersburg days. 

His vigor of mind was shown by his " Circular to the 
Clergy," published in 1903, which must have made any 
sensitive person in that body cringe with shame. This 
same year he wrote his ringing protests against the Jew- 
baiting and pogr6ms in Kishenef and Gomel, and contrib- 

384 



LATER WRITINGS 385 

uted three short stories for the relief of the victims of 
those terrible riots. 

In September of that year a member of the maritime 
court-martial, named Lazarevsky, came to visit Tolstoi', 
who was then suffering from a slight accident. The day 
after his seventy-fifth birthday he was riding horseback 
and dismounted to cross a ravine. While leading the 
horse it stepped on his foot and lamed him, so that for 
some time he was obliged to go about in a wheeled chair. 
Tolstoi did not approve of Lazarevsky's occupation, 
though he was glad to learn that for several years no one 
had been condemned to death by his court. He was 
especially interested in the case of a sailor who belonged 
to a dissenting sect, had been accused of proselyting 
among his comrades and was acquitted. "God be 
praised!" exclaimed the count. 

They spoke about the poverty of people and Lazarevsky 
told of seeing people eat rotten fish, eggs, and fruit in 
the Khitrof Market at Moscow; but when he suggested 
to Tolstoi to write an article calling attention to this 
misery and protesting against the sale of such articles, 
Tolstoi declared that drunkenness and debauchery in the 
majority of cases and not misfortune reduced people to 
these conditions. He had ceased to believe in establish- 
ments for aiding men; he declared that philanthropists 
had done more harm than good. 

He expressed very much the same opinion to Andreye- 
vitch, who also had been visiting the market. 

"Why did you want to go there?" demanded Tolstoi. 
"They always have been bosyaki and they always will 
be. They drink, are lazy and that is all there is to it." 

He thought it was a miserable curiosity which led 
people to go slumming; bosyaki, the barefooted beggars, 
were "lost souls" for whom nothing could be done. 

Lazarevsky found the home-life of the Tolstois — as 
indeed did all other visitors — full of interest. He was 
asked to fill up the blanks in a series of questions supposed 



386 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

to betray one's individuality. He noticed that all the 
others who had complied answered the question "Who 
is your favorite author ?" with the word "Tolstoi." 

Then, as often, they had delightful music, the two sisters 
singing folk-songs or other simple melodies such as their 
father loved. There were two grand pianos, which were 
in frequent use, as well as guitars and the three-stringed 
balalaika. 

Tolstoi's extreme views in advocating the doctrine of 
individualism were well illustrated in December, 1904, 
when he cabled to "The North American Review" that 
he objected to the Zemstvo agitation and the establish- 
ment of representative government in Russia. "True 
social amelioration," he said, "can be attained only by 
the perfecting of all individuals. Political agitation, put- 
ting before individuals pernicious illustration of social 
improvement by change of forms, habitually stops real 
progress, as can be observed in all constitutional coun- 
tries — France, England, America." 

His attitude was a bitter disappointment to those self- 
sacrificing men who saw no help for Russia except by a 
government in which representatives of the people should 
replace the irresponsible beaureaucracy defending its 
privileges by arbitrary acts of oppression. Indeed, his 
attitude was strange in view of his letter to the Emperor. 

The Russo-Japanese War broke out, and of course Tol- 
stoi* looked upon it with horror. He wrote several 
open letters regarding it. The war and the massacre 
of the Petersburg workmen as they were led by Father 
Gapdn to petition the Emperor, his own limitations of 
strength, and a serious illness of his wife combined to 
distress him. Although he felt that it was the duty of a 
man to submit to the will of God and not by surgery or 
medicine infringe on the solemnity of approaching death, 
he opposed no objection to the operation which the doc- 
tors proposed to have performed. It proved to be a 
perfect success. The countess entirely recovered. 



LATER WRITINGS 387 

Another work in which at this time he was greatly- 
interested was a sort of periodical called Krug Chteniya, 
or " Circle of Reading," for which he wrote several articles 
and furnished others from various sources. This also 
came into frequent collision with the censor. 

In December, 1906, his second daughter, Marya, who 
had married Prince N. L. Obolyensky in June, 1897, and 
who with her husband had been living in one "wing" 
of the Yasnaya home, died suddenly. She had agreed 
with her father that it was shameful for them to live in 
luxury while their brethren were perishing from want, and 
when he divided his property among his children in 1891 
had refused to accept her share; but her mother, being 
wiser, kept it for her so that she was enabled to take it to 
her husband as a marriage portion. Even this sorrow 
Tolstoi's philosophy of life enabled him to bear without 
a murmur. His brother Sergyei, with whom he had 
come into closer touch in these later years, died in Sep- 
tember, 1904. 

He again occupied himself with the instruction of 
village children and in 1908 published his "Exposition 
of the Teaching of Jesus for Children," which grew out of 
his experiences in these lessons. 

The list of his published articles during the four years 
from 1906 to 1909 counts up to seventy, besides scores of 
private letters; it includes stories for children, biographical 
sketches and articles applying his doctrine of non-resist- 
ance to the questions of the day. He wrote to one paper 
asking that no mention be made of his illnesses. He 
publicly announced that having renounced the holding 
of property he had nothing to give the hundreds of appli- 
cants who wanted to beg or borrow from him for all sorts 
of purposes. One young man wanted to live in accord- 
ance with Tolstoian principles but wanted to borrow one 
hundred and fifty rubles to pay his debts before he could 
begin; another had a sick mother and wanted fifty; a lady 
demanded that he should send her five hundred so that 



388 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

her daughter might continue at the Conservatory; others 
would only be satisfied with several thousands. 

His plea that people should cease applying to him 
ended with the dilemma that if he told the truth and 
had no money to give away, he could not give any away, 
but if he lied and had money, he was not the man from 
whom to expect aid. 

Another of his writings was in protest against the execu- 
tions of Russian revolutionists. It was entitled "Nye 
Mogu Molchat'," "I cannot be silent." It argued that 
the terrible things that were taking place in Russia — the 
destitution of the people caused by their being robbed of 
the land and their enlistment in armies where they were 
taught to kill, the false priesthood perverting true 
Christianity, the thousands of hungry workmen tramping 
through Russia, the thousands of cases of typhus and 
scurvy in fortresses and prisons; the wives, mothers, and 
fathers of the exiles and the executed — all existed for him : 
it was his fault as long as he shared in the protection of 
that government. So he wrote and promised to circulate 
his protest by all the means in his power both at home 
and abroad, that one of two things might happen: that the 
inhuman deeds might be stopped or that he might be put 
into prison where he would no longer realize that these 
things were done on his behalf, or better still that the 
hangmen might put on him the shroud and death cap 
and push him off the bench so that by his own weight 
he might tighten the well-soaped noose about his old 
throat. 

This protest was printed by a number of the Russian 
papers, and in consequence they had to pay fines of from 
two hundred to three thousand rubles. 

The authorities, both spiritual and secular, combined to 
limit the celebration of Tolstoi's eightieth birthday. The 
Holy Synod as usual came out against him with warnings, 
threatenings and false accusations. Father Ivan prayed 
for his death. Literary and other societies were for- 



LATER WRITINGS 389 

bidden to mention his name except as a literarian pure 
and simple. 

One of Tolstoi's friends had been sent to prison for six 
months for circulating some of his anti-government and 
anti-army writings. This man made the suggestion that 
the proper way to celebrate the jubilee would be to send 
Tolstoi himself to prison. Tolstoi, who disapproved of 
any celebration, was much pleased with this idea and 
wrote that he could not refrain from longing with his 
whole soul that the suggestion should be taken not as a 
joke but as "a course which would satisfy those who 
objected to his writings and their circulation and at the 
same time would afford him in his old age, before he 
died, genuine happiness and satisfaction as well as re- 
lease him from the burden of the threatened celebration." 

The Government and the Church, however, did not dare 
stem the tide of popular appreciation. Many news- 
papers and magazines devoted all the space they desired 
to his career, and gatherings were not hindered from 
passing congratulatory resolutions. Two thousand tele- 
grams were received at Yasnaya. Of course it was 
impossible for Tolstoi to reply individually to all these 
congratulations and he wrote a letter to the papers 
thanking all the universities, the city Dumas, the rural 
boards, the various classical institutions, all societies, 
unions, clubs, groups of individuals, editors of newspapers 
and journals, who sent him addresses and salutations. 
He thanked all his friends and acquaintances, in Russia 
and abroad, for remembering him; he thanked all strangers 
of every station in life, many of them confined in prisons 
or in exile; he thanked young men and maidens and 
children; he thanked the clergy — few to be sure — but all 
the more welcome because of the risks they ran. And 
above all he thanked those who expressed their sympathy 
for his endeavors to show forth the eternal truths in his 
writings — especially the peasants and working-men. 
He had not wished the day to be celebrated but he could 



3QO THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

not help being deeply touched by such a spontaneous 
outpouring of affection and appreciation. 

At Petersburg his friends and admirers founded a 
museum in his honor, and manuscripts, editions of his 
works in nearly fifty languages, portraits, busts, and even 
caricatures were there deposited. 

Among the visitors to Yasnaya the year of his Jubilee 
was William Jennings Bryan, who reached there at four 
o'clock in the morning. In October of that year Tolstoi 
wrote a letter expressing his hope that the "great Com- 
moner" might win success in his campaign for the presi- 
dency. He of course did not agree that there should be 
such offices as that of President, but as long as they existed 
he felt they should be occupied by men worthy of trust; 
and Mr. Bryan had awakened his respect and sympathy, 
since the basis of his activity he felt was kindred with 
his own in his sympathy with the interests of the working 
people, his anti-militarism, and his recognition of the 
fallacies of capitalism. 

A woman, a member of the sect of the Starovyerui or 
Old Believers, wrote him that if she had the power she 
would shoot him for his blasphemous writings and relent- 
lessly put all his followers to death. Tolstoi' replied to 
her in a sweet spirit of conciliation, thanking her for her 
letter, which, he said, gave him great pleasure because he 
saw in her a truly religious woman desirous of living in ac- 
cordance with the law of God. He thought, however, that 
a man could fulfill God's law only by purifying his heart 
from all evil and increasing the good. Her humility in 
speaking of herself delighted him but it offended him that 
she thought, that is seemed to think, she and her teachers 
were the only people that knew the truth and that all the 
rest were lost. "I do not think," he said, "that I am the 
only person that knows the truth and that every one else 
is in darkness. I am eighty years old and am still search- 
ing for the truth. Your teachers have led you into the sin 
of conceit and condemnation." He ended by praying 




Count Tolstoi and William J. Bryan. 



LATER WRITINGS 391 

that God might help her to fulfill His will. He offered to 
send her his writings, and signed his letter, "Liubyashchy 
vas" — " Yours lovingly. " 

In accordance with his suggestion she continued the cor- 
respondence and finally came over to his way of thinking. 



VISITS TO AN INSANE ASYLUM 

The following year (1909) Tolstoi's friend and chief 
follower, V. Tchertkof, was banished by administrative 
order from the Government of Tula. He settled in the 
village of Otradnoye, not far from Moscow. If he could 
not visit Tolstoi, Tolstoi certainly managed to visit him. 
The first time he went the excitement was too much for 
him. He had not been in Moscow in eight years, and 
the crowds that pressed around him and the new im- 
pressions wearied him so that when he reached Yasnaya 
Polyana, after an absence of a fortnight, he had two 
fainting spells. 

In the summer of 19 10 he went to Otradnoye again 
and then for the first time in his life visited an insane 
asylum. He had many interviews with the patients and 
physicians and asked no end of questions. The director 
took him all over the institution and was surprised to 
see how alert and quick he was to see every detail. As 
usual he wore a simple canvas blouse reaching to his 
knees and belted, old wide trousers of soft dark-gray 
tricot, and a canvas cap. In his pocket he carried a 
silver watch on a black cord. He had also a folding 
chair. In spite of his resemblance to a common peasant 
he revealed by all the motions of his head, by his walk, 
by his whole attitude, that he was the aristocrat. 

Some of the patients did not give him intelligent 
answers to his questions, but others recognized him, 
either by his resemblance to his pictures or from having 
seen him before. In the women's ward, where the 
patients were drinking tea, he spoke to one .woman, who 

392 



VISITS TO AN INSANE ASYLUM 393 

had been very sullen all day. But as soon as he spoke to 
her she got up and smiled pleasantly, saying, "Zdravst- 
vuite, Ly6f Nikolai'tch" — " Good evening." 

"What! Do you know me?" asked the count. 

11 We all know you. When I was a teacher, I had your 
portrait in my room." She told him that she did not 
believe in any one or anything. 

"But you believe in God?" 

"No, if I believe in anything it is Science." 

Tolstoi began to tell her about the necessity of religion 
for human beings, but when he offered to explain what 
she did not understand she replied that religious questions 
did not interest her. 

He shook his head sadly and turned to an old woman 
who he heard had been tempted to commit suicide, and 
remarked to her that it was a great sin, that one should 
not go against God's law. 

Another jolly old person, whom he asked if she prayed 
to God, replied, "No." 

"But you know 'Otche nash'— 'Our Father'?" 

"No, I know ' Otche Byes'— 'Father of Devils.'" 

"How can you say such a thing? There is no such 
prayer. Do you want me to teach you 'Our Father'?" 

"No, it is not necessary. At my home in Mozhaisk 
they teach 'Our Father,' but here they teach you 'Otche 
Byes.'" 

"No," said Tolstoi, "you are mistaken, they teach 
the same thing everywhere. In your situation especially 
you must believe and pray." 

He was photographed as he took tea with the patients. 

On the next floor a patient recognized him and immedi- 
ately began to complain that the doctors would not listen 
to what she said. Tolstoi told her that they understood 
her case better than she did. She became violent. 
Wishing to calm her, he offered to shake hands, but she 
refused. He remarked, "You know women are 
obstinate." 



394 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

He was pleased that the patients were permitted to 
work and surprised at the things they did. "I am very 
glad/' he said, "to find that here and there work has its 
mighty significance recognized.' ' 

In the men's ward, after trying to discover an inter- 
esting face, he picked out a tall young man who had 
become insane through drink. Tolstoi, after a few 
questions, urged him to give up drinking. "All it 
requires is to have the strong desire to do so," he said. 
"Now — here for example you can caress me or you can 
strike me. You can drink or you can cease drinking. 
Now give me your word that you will give it up." 

The patient listened very attentively but finally said, 
"I cannot give you my word. Here I don't drink; but 
I have spells, and outside I can't restrain myself." 

When Tolstoi found that he was an educated man he 
said, " Of course you can conquer the habit, and when you 
have, write me all about it and I will help you; I will send 
you books that will interest you." 

Another drunkard — an old man — met him. 

"How old are you?" asked Tolstoi. 

"Three quarters of a century." 

"Well, I am older than you — I shall soon be eighty- 
two," said Tolstoi. "Tell me, was your former life better 
than this ?" 

The patient raised his eyebrows and looked down. 
"How can I tell whether it was better or not — it was 
ampler." 

"That is likely, Step£n Andreyevitch. 'Ampler.' 
You are right." 

"Just so," continued the muzhik, "but at least my 
former life was rather hard." Tolstoi frowned and made 
a motion with his lips. "That is the trouble. Well, 
good-by, Stepan Andreyevitch, thank you for a pleasant 
talk. Who knows ? This may be the last time we shall 
ever meet. You will be seeking for me in this world 
with a lantern." 



VISITS TO AN INSANE ASYLUM 395 

The old man replied, " You will live to be a hundred." 
Then he asked for a present and ended with an impu- 
dent joke which Tolstoi' pretended not to hear. 

During the expedition Tolstoi and Tchertkof went into 
a peasant's izba and the count was greatly pleased with its 
neat appearance. The muzhik had been at Tolstoi's 
house in Moscow twelve years before. He had a library 
and Tolstoi advised him to read Semyonof, a writer for 
the people. When he found that he never drank and 
was a member of the Trezvost or Temperance Society, 
he was greatly pleased. He talked with the muzhik's 
old father and asked him which were better, the old days or 
now. The old man replied, "Now," because he had 
white bread to eat all the time whereas formerly he had 
it only on great holidays. 

The count rejoined: "Not by bread alone is a man 
fed," and asked him if he drank vodka. 

He replied, "Sometimes." 

"Didn't men drink more vodka formerly?" 

"No, certainly less." 

To which Tolstoi replied in the enigmatic staccato 
phrase, "Vot to-to i ono-to" — "Well, that is just the way 
of it." 

He returned to the institution another day and asked 
the doctors all sorts of questions and was surprised to 
learn how many patients were permanently cured. He 
wanted to know all about practical and theoretical psy- 
chiatry and the boundaries between normal health and 
mental illness, or the three elements of the soul. He 
thought one difficulty was that one theory was super- 
seded by a second and that by a third. 

One of the doctors asked him if he had ever been at 
any other insane hospital. He replied that he had 
attended a clinic many years before. When asked if he 
had been at the Tula Asylum, he said he could not 
remember and remarked that they as alienists must 
be interested in such phenomena as lapses of memory. 



396 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

"My memory," he said, "is really growing feeble. 
What is that called? Amnemonika, isn't it? How- 
ever," he went on to say, after a brief pause, "I am not 
at all regretful for this but rather glad, because owing to 
this all trivialities, all superfluities, vanish out of my 
mind and only what is important and necessary for me 
remains." 

At his last visit he sat with the patients and watched a 
kinetoscope. He was received with flowers and sat be- 
tween his daughter, Aleksandra, and one of the directors. 
Among the films that he liked were the burning of Rome, 
Schafhausen, the Zoological Gardens at Antwerp, and the 
coronation of King Edward. When horses came stepping 
along he exclaimed to his daughter: "Look! look! how 
they move their legs, how they prance! That is a fine 
one on which the officer is sitting. I should like a horse 
like that, he!" 

When he started to ride the kilometer and a half to 
Otradnoye, he mounted his horse without any assistance 
and galloped off like a young cavalier. While he was 
staying at Otradnoye he received as many as a hundred 
letters and telegrams a day. He usually answered those 
that were addressed to him simply as L. N. Tolstoi; but 
those that carried his title he declared could wait and they 
were often not answered at all. 

He still kept up his habit of writing long letters. That 
which he wrote to Biryukof, with a full account of the 
execution of the soldier for striking his superior, occupies 
nearly eight pages of small type. Many of his last 
articles were left unfinished or are still in manuscript. 



VI 

"titan entangled in foul circumstance" 

On his return to Yasnaya, at ten o'clock in the evening 
on the seventeenth of August a number of men in uniform 
appeared at his house and demanded to see his secretary, 
Nikolai Nikolayevitch Gusef. They informed him that 
he was to go with them. Tolstoi went downstairs and 
asked what it meant. Their ispravnik drew out of his 
pocket a paper and proceeded to read in a solemn tone 
the decision of the Minister of Internal Affairs, that as 
a lesson to the Russian people, N. N. Gusef, who had 
been distributing revolutionary literature, was to be 
punished by being first confined in the Krapivensky 
prison and thence banished to the Tcherduinsky district 
of Perm. 

Tolstoi immediately wrote one of his most vigorous 
letters to the editor of the Russkiya Vyedoniosti, protesting 
against such an act of tyranny. Gusef during his two 
years in the service of Tolstoi had never distributed or 
even read any revolutionary literature. It was simply 
the Government, "ready to wound but afraid to strike,'' 
injuring Tolstoi's friends and not touching him. 

He had written in a somewhat similar strain in May, 
1896, to Muraviof, the Minister of Justice, urging him to 
release a lady of Tula who had been arrested for lending 
one of his prohibited books to a peasant. Was she the 
only person in Russia, he had asked, who distributed his 
writings! Why did they not imprison him, the source of 
this pernicious literature! 

He was invited to attend the proposed Peace Congress 
at Stockholm and wrote to the president that if he had 

397 



398 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

sufficient strength he would make every endeavor to be 
there, but if not he would send what he wanted to say, in 
the hope that the members would care to know his opinions. 
The cause which the congress met to serve had, he said, 
occupied him for many years and he thought it of the 
highest importance. He had written the Baroness von 
Suttner at an earlier date that the abolition of war could 
never be accomplished by peace congresses. His panacea 
of non-resistance was the only means. The congress 
was postponed for a year owing to the Swedish strikes, 
and so he did not go. The Nobel Prize was conferred 
upon him, but as it was contrary to his principles to 
accept money he refused it. 

One day toward the end of his life an officer who had 
written a denunciation of Tolstoi came to call him to 
account for his inconsistency in riding a fine horse while 
preaching poverty. After the officer had gone Tolstoi 
gave orders to turn the old horse out to pasture and for a 
time abstained from riding. But as he required exercise 
and could not walk with any comfort, he took to riding a 
common work-horse; but ultimately he had Delire shod 
again. 

He had a characteristic exchange of letters with Bernard 
Shaw, who sent him his "Showing up of Blanco Posnet" 
and ended the letter accompanying it with the jesting 
question, " Suppose the world were only one of God's 
jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke 
instead of a bad one ?" 

Tolstoi could not agree with Shaw's theology and he 
reprimanded him for the flippant question. He thought 
the problem about good and evil too important to be 
spoken of in jest. 

One of the most powerful and effective of all Tolstoi's 
articles came out the last year of his life. It was entitled 
"Three Days in a Village. " It describes with marvelous 
vividness all the wretchedness, the degradation, and the 
sordid squalor of a typical Russian village. This more 



" TITAN IN FOUL CIRCUMSTANCE" 399 

than any of his works aroused the wrath of the authorities, 
and yet it was read with more avidity than almost any 
other of his later works except "Resurrection." 

After his death his daughter proposed to establish 
a sort of rest-house or caravanserai where homeless 
wanderers might find shelter. But the peasantry of the 
vicinity strenuously objected and the Countess Aleksan- 
dra wrote to the Vyestnik Yevropui a letter explaining 
the reason for the abandonment of the plan and quite 
justifying the peasants in their objections. 

In many of Tolstoi's letters he speaks of his spiritual 
contentment. It therefore comes as a not unexpected 
surprise — knowing how dissatisfied he was to live in a 
big house, with liveried servants and surrounded with 
what he called luxury — to read a letter to his wife 
written in the early morning of the twenty-seventh of 
July, 1910. After being sent from room to room it was 
handed to the countess. He wrote: — 

"I might continue to live on in this way, if I could 
calmly endure thy sufferings. But I cannot. Yesterday 
thou went out irritated and suffering. I wanted to go to 
sleep, but I began not so much to think as to be conscious 
of thee and I could not sleep; and I listened for an hour, 
for two hours, and then I fell into a doze and still I listened 
and in a dream or what was almost a dream I saw thee. 

"Think calmly, dear friend, listen to thine own heart, 
trust thy feelings, and thou wilt decide upon whatever 
is necessary. I will say that for my part I have decided 
irrevocably what I must do. Goliibushka, darling, cease 
tormenting not others, but thyself, thyself. Because 
thou sufferest a hundred times more than the rest. This 
is all." 

He had written a similar but much longer letter to his 
wife in June, 1897. It was found among his papers 
after his death and published by the countess in the 
Novoye Vremya. In it he spoke of the discord between 
his religious views and the temptations to which he 



4 oo THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

was exposed. "The chief thing is that, just as the 
Hindus when nearing sixty retire into the woods, and 
as old religious men seek to devote their last years to God 
and not to jokes, puns, gossip, or tennis, so for me entering 
into my seventieth year, the all soul-absorbing desire is 
for tranquillity, for solitude.'' 

He said that he had long desired to do this and the 
fact that he was about to do it did not mean that he was 
displeased with her, but during the last fifteen years they 
had drifted apart. "I cannot blame you that you did 
not follow me, but I thank you and lovingly remember 
and shall continue to remember you for what you gave 
me." 

There was no immediate change, but on the tenth of 
November, Tolstoi, finally exasperated by the conditions 
of his life at home,* left Yasnaya in the darkness of 
the early morning with his friend and physician, Dushan 
Petrovitch Makovitsky, never to return. He left a letter 
of explanation for his wife. It said : — 

"My departure will wound thee; I regret it, but thou 
must realize and believe that I cannot do otherwise. My 
position at home is unendurable. , I cannot longer live 
in these conditions of luxury in which I have been living 
and I am doing what old men of my age are accustomed 
to do. They escape from the worldly life so as to live 
their last days in solitude and peace. Please understand 
this and do not follow me, even if thou knowest where 
I am. If thou shouldst do so it would not alter my 
decision. 

" I thank thee for thy honorable life of forty-eight years 
with me and I beg thee to forgive me for all wherein I 
have been to blame toward thee, just as I forgive thee 

* Peasants had cut down and carried off wood from the estate; 
the countess proceeded against them; he felt they had a right to take 
it, as it was theirs as much as his. Other conflicts arising from "the 
rights of property," which he did not recognize and which the countess, 
in her management of the estate, insisted upon regarding, made him very 
unhappy. 




A Late Portrait of Count Tolstoi. 



"TITAN IN FOUL CIRCUMSTANCE" 401 

with all my heart for whatever thou hast been to blame 
toward me. I advise thee to reconcile thyself to the new 
situation in which my departure leaves thee and do not 
bear me any ill will." 

For the last time he had gone forth to seek the Blue- 
bird Happiness. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE WOUNDED LION SEEKS A LAIR 

It was a gray, gloomy morning long before light when 
this modern Buddha stole away from the home where 
he might have enjoyed every comfort, every luxury. 
He was driven to the little railway station of Shchyokino, 
where he dismissed the coachman. Until the train 
arrived he walked in great agitation up and down the 
platform in the chilling damp air. Then he took his 
seat and leaned back in weariness on the cushion which 
the doctor had arranged for him. After a journey of 
fifty-five versts in comparative comfort, he left the coach 
at Gorbatchyovo and entered a dirty, ill- ventilated third- 
class car attached to a freight train and rode with a 
crowd of ill-smelling workmen one hundred and five 
versts to Kozyel'sko, whence he was driven eighteen 
versts to the Optin Pustuin Hermitage and from there 
to the nunnery at Shamardino, where his sister was living 
her secluded life. He called to see her and was not re- 
fused admittance. 

The testimony of his physician and his diary show that 
at first his soul was intensely satisfied with his new freedom. 
At Shamardino he wrote a letter at four o'clock in the 
morning to his nieces "Mashenka" and"Lizanka," asking 
them not to be surprised and not to be offended for his 
having gone away without bidding them farewell. He 
thanked them for the love and sympathy which they had 
always shown him, and here also he expressed his joy at 
having taken the final and irrevocable step. 

He slept at the monastery and is thought to have 
caught cold from the open ventilator of the window, his 

402 



THE WOUNDED LION SEEKS A LAIR 403 

power of endurance having undoubtedly been weakened 
by the dreadful atmosphere of the car. From Shamar- 
dino he was driven back to KozyePsko in a cold pouring 
rain, and increased his cold by the exposure. 

What his intentions were after returning to the railway 
station cannot be definitely told. His great desire was 
to shun publicity. Like a sick lion he must have known 
that his death was at hand, and with the instinct to go 
away and hide until the great change should come, he 
sought the wilderness, doubling on his tracks to elude 
the impertinence of the inquisitive. 

Yet he could not help realizing that this unusual step 
would not only cause his family deep distress but also 
create a powerful sensation throughout the world. His 
daughter, Aleksandra, who had joined him, told a re- 
porter that they noticed that some one was deliberately 
following them on the train, and although he several times 
changed his disguise, they were aware of his presence. 
It became very unpleasant and annoying to her father, 
and every effort was made to throw the spy off his track. 
Tolstoi's great desire was to gain a few days and then to 
find some way of keeping out of sight. And so she and 
the doctor acquiesced in his desire to keep on the move. 

But she did not say where he intended ultimately to 
find a resting-place except to intimate that if he could 
have secured a passport he would have gone abroad. 
Some think that he w T as intending to join a Tolstoian 
community* on the shores of the Black Sea or in the 
Caucasus. At all events, he continued his journey south 
until he reached Rostof-on-the-Don, nearly two hundred 
versts farther. He was already feeling ill but still he 
pushed on until, on the fourth day, he was compelled to 
leave the train at the little village of Astapovo, more than 
one hundred versts from Rostof. 

He was carried to the humble little old red house of the 
station-master, I. I. Ozolin, and there his illness grew 

* See Appendix II. 



4 o4 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

so serious that his family was notified and six physicians 
were immediately enlisted in the desperate battle to save 
his life. Before they came he whispered in his feeble 
voice to his daughter and to his friends Tchertkdf and 
Boulanger, who were by his bedside, " There are so 
many suffering people in the world and you are concerned 
only with me!" 

Early in the morning of the twentieth, the Countess 
Sophia Andreyevna, herself ill from grief and sleepless- 
ness, reached Astapovo, but when the doctors informed 
her that her presence in the sick-room might disturb the 
flickering flame of life, she had the self-control to acqui- 
esce. Not until he had lost consciousness was she per- 
mitted to enter the room. 

Reporters from the Russian newspapers gathered 
around the house of death and sent telegraphic reports of 
every change. One message read: — 

"The minutes drag themselves out painfully like hours. 
The night is a torture. Day is just dawning. Occa- 
sionally some one of the family appears at the door. All 
of them are in the house. " 

Just before the end came Count Ilya Lvovitch left the 
house. When he returned ten minutes later the front 
door was locked. He tapped lightly at the window but 
no one heeded. Several newspaper correspondents and 
two storozhd or railway-guards were on the door-step. 
Ilya Lvovitch knocked again. The window-ventilator 
was opened and one of the doctors uttered the one word : 
" Skontchalsa" — "He has passed away." All bent their 
heads. Some one sobbed. Then deep silence reigned, 
broken only by the distant whistle of a freight-train. 

When the door was opened they could hear the sound of 
sobbing. The station-master was in tears. The police- 
captain in great agitation was asking if it could be true 
that the fatal event had taken place. 

At the station the telegraph operator was wringing his 
hands, and when asked to send the sad news replied in a 



THE WOUNDED LION SEEKS A LAIR 405 

broken voice, "I cannot, I cannot." All Astdpovo 
and many of the inhabitants of the neighboring villages 
solemnly gathered about the house, and after the beloved 
form had been laved and attired in the well-known blouse 
and gray trousers and laid on the bed, which was adorned 
with juniper boughs, they were admitted ten at a time to 
look on the peaceful features of the man they all loved. 
Bowing to the ground they kissed the cold hand, many of 
them sobbing as if their hearts would break. Some- 
what later the correspondent from whose account these 
details are taken looked into the room and saw the count- 
ess bent low over the pillow, with her tears streaming over 
the emaciated face. With her hand she was smoothing 
his noble forehead and exclaiming in broken accents: 
"Dusha rnoyd! Zhizw? moyd!" As she heard the man's 
steps, she looked up with stony politeness and turned 
back the covering as far as the belt. 

The correspondent knelt before the bier and touching 
his head to the floor and trembling with emotion whis- 
pered: — 

" O great spirit, accept my last earthly farewell in the 
name of all who have been awaiting news of thee, of all 
who have read with anxiety and hope the tidings of thy 
welfare. No one knows, great teacher of humanity, 
but that thou art still in our midst. " 

The body seemed to have shrunk; the face had greatly 
changed; the nose was sharp; the skin was like parch- 
ment; the eyes were closed. A white handkerchief was 
bound about the lower jaw, hiding the gray beard. The 
hands, shriveled and dark, lay on his breast. 

And it seemed to the imagination of the correspondent 
that the bare walls of the little red house opened out into 
infinity, so that the whole world might gaze on the grand, 
peaceful face of the prophet, with his lofty brow shining 
with the light of the loftiest thoughts. "Even in the 
grave," said he, "he asks the world his direct, inexorable 
question concerning the real meaning of life. The room 



4 o6 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

seemed full of agonized broken lamentations. If not 
actually heard they are expressed in the utterance of the 
words VydtchnayaPdmyaf — "Eternal Memory," resound- 
ing from time to time in the room. Some simple-hearted, 
gray-haired man stops before the bier, speaks it in deep 
tones, brokenly, disconnectedly. Words are of little 
moment. This itself is a lamentation. At the pillow the 
countess joins in the common grief. This is the heart- 
stirring litany of lament. "This untroubled face of the 
dead man in this barren chamber, this singing, the in- 
harmonious singing of laborers and muzhiks over 'our 
count,' represent a state of feeling impossible for my 
feeble pen to reproduce. " 

When the day came to an end and the swinging lampada 
was lighted, it shone on the face of one who seemed to 
sleep and might at any moment awaken. After a time 
the white handkerchief was removed and all present joined 
in the Vyetchnaya Pdmyat\ twice repeated. Even into 
the evening the peasants in their long overcoats stood in 
groups around the door-step embracing one another. 
One was heard to comfort the others, saying: — 

"Fear not for him; he loved the people so." Some of 
them went in and dropping on their knees kissed the cold 
hand of the dead, weeping and wiping away their tears. 
At his pillow had been placed a wreath of forget-me-nots 
with the inscription: Vyelikomu Dyedushkye — "To our 
distinguished grandfather." 

Before the countess could be induced to leave the body 
of her husband she threw herself upon it and sobbed: 
"If only sufferings could expiate sins! — there could be 
greater agony than this. " 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FUNERAL 

The general attitude of the clergy was shown in the 
words of the priest of Astapovo, Father Gratsyensky, 
who when asked if he should make any mention of the 
count's death in church exclaimed in a startled tone: — 

"Why! is he dead?" and then, crossing himself, whis- 
pered, "No, I shall have nothing to say. " 

The Hermit Varsonofy of the Optin Pustuin, who had 
been on hand to take advantage of any signs of repentance 
on the part of the outcast son of the Church, as soon as he 
heard that death had occurred said, "My mission is at 
an end;" but when he was asked if the panikhida or 
antiphonal service for the dead would be performed, 
he replied, "I know as much about it as I do about the 
inhabitants of the moon." 

The Bishop of Tula, Parfeny, arrived opportunely at 
Astapovo, as if merely passing through, but it was known 
that he had been sent by the Holy Synod to secure definite 
information as to whether Tolstoi before losing conscious- 
ness had expressed any desire for reconciliation with the 
Church. Not leaving the train, he had a long conversa- 
tion with Count Andrei Lvovitch and his sister Tatyana. 
When he learned that no such desire had been expressed, 
he said, "Then nothing remains for me but to go on my 
way." 

Count Tolstoi had hardly breathed his last when the 
Ober-Prokuror of the Synod, S. M. Lukyanof, and other 
high ecclesiastics began to receive telegrams asking 
instructions. Lukyanof and the Metropolitan Antony 
had a consultation and decided that if by evening their 

407 



4 o8 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

representatives Bishop Parfeny and Iosif, the Father- 
superior of the Hermitage, had not sent definite informa- 
tion regarding Tolstoi's last days, or if they were not 
assured of Tolstoi's last wishes, which some of the mem- 
bers of the Synod imagined were favorable to reconcilia- 
tion, then the only concession that the Synod would per- 
mit would be for the priest to conduct the body to its 
burial with the song Svyatui Bozhe — " God of Holiness." 

The Synod was convened at the residence of the 
Metropolitan at seven o'clock. In the meantime the 
Prime Minister Stoluipin, the son of Tolstoi's old Cossack 
friend, informed the Ober-Prokuror that he had received 
from Prince Obolyensky, Governor of Ryazan, a telegram 
announcing that the Tolstoi family had decided to fulfill 
the expressed will of Count Tolstoi', that his body should 
be buried as promptly as possible in the cheapest coffin, 
in the cheapest graveyard, without wreaths, without 
newspaper notices, without obituary sketches, and if 
possible without Church services. This telegram pro- 
duced a most painful impression on the Prime Minister 
and the Ober-Prokuror. 

At the meeting of the Synod, Lukyanof made a lengthy 
speech in which he said that the Church had done all in 
its power to bring Tolstoi back to the fold. The Hermit 
Iosif had been intrusted with the task of admonishing 
the " wandering sheep," while the Bishops of Tula and of 
Ryazan together with the Father Superior of the Optin 
Pustuin had been instructed to use all their influence to 
reconcile him with the Church before his death. Finally 
he informed the Synod of the telegram from Prince 
Obolyensky and of a similar one from the countess. 

The question was then discussed, the members of the 
Synod being divided in their opinions. Some thought 
that the fact that Tolstoi had gone from Yasnaya Polyana 
to the Optin Hermitage in itself showed a change in his 
feelings and opinions and that this should be reckoned in 
his favor. Others thought that as Tolstoi had voluntarily 



THE FUNERAL 409 

left the Church his return to it should also be made volun- 
tarily, while in his latest writings there was not the slight- 
est sign of such an intention. 

It was finally decided that in view of Tolstoi's wish and 
that of the family the Supreme Council of the Church 
must leave the matter in statu quo. It was also decided 
to send instructions to all the clergy of Russia to refrain 
from all liturgical or other services in Tolstoi's memory. 
Thus the Church took no farewell of her great outcast son. 

Nevertheless the Countess Tolstaya and several mem- 
bers of her family, together with Prince Obolyensky, the 
Hermit Varsonofy, and others, caused a liturgy to be per- 
formed over the remains at Astapovo. During the service 
the countess fainted away. 

Before the remains were removed from the house, the 
station-master announced that he should leave the room 
in which Tolstoi had died, exactly as it was. The pro- 
posal was also made that the little old house should be 
bought by subscription and made into a memorial either 
as a school-house to bear his name, or should be repaired 
and transported to Yasnaya Polyana to be used as a 
Tolstoi museum. 

A passenger-coach attached to a freight-train conveyed 
the dead writer and his family back to the little station of 
Shchyokino, where it arrived about nine o'clock in the 
evening. A great crowd had collected, dominated by the 
ever present police. The Chief of Police of Tula was 
present, having driven over with his troika. When the 
train drew up the Countess Aleksandra Lvovna, V. G. 
Tchertkof, I. Kuzminsky, and a few others dismounted; 
as the reporter graphically expressed it, " Despair breathed 
from the little group." 

The funeral took place the following day — the twenty- 
second of November. Various explanations were offered 
for the precipitancy of the interment. Many supposed 
that it was due to the desire of "the temporal pow r ers" to 
cut short what they regarded as a " scandalous spectacle." 



4 io THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Others thought it was due to the initiative of the family, 
who were anxious to carry out the great man's wishes. 
When the countess was asked by the representatives of 
the Government what should be done about the funeral, 
she replied, "Let it be as speedily as possible and 
without formalities. " 

The local police remained neutral, simply maintaining 
order in a perfunctory manner, having received no other 
instructions. 

But at the grave, persons close to the family declared 
that "Somewhere, far away, at Petersburg, the highest 
authorities of the State and of the Church had long before 
settled the status of the third moral Power represented by 
the mortal remains of the great Russian; that after long 
diplomatic conferences the Temporal and the Eccle- 
siastical Powers had failed to agree, and that the diplomacy 
of this world had influenced the Ecclesiastical Power to 
circumvent the will of the great Christian heretic and 
take charge of the remains under governmental auspices. 
The family knew of this and had no intention that it should 
be carried out : hence the unusual haste. The railways at 
first established an especial train service to accommodate 
those from a distance who desired to be present; but for 
some reason the Government interfered and the extra 
trains were taken off, so that only people from Moscow 
and neighboring points were enabled to get to Yasnaya 
Polyana in time. 

The body in a simple coffin was borne on the shoulders 
of students and muzhiks and was laid away in a mound 
at the edge of the ravine, in the very place amid the old 
oaks where the mysterious "green stick" of his boyhood 
game, with its secret inscription showing how all men may 
be happy, was supposed to be hidden. 

The distinguished author and editor, Vladimir Koro- 
lenko, who had been sent to describe the event, arrived 
only on the morning of the following day; when he dis- 
mounted from his train long before the dawn of the chill, 



THE FUNERAL 411 

gloomy, foggy day, he saw appearing through the mist the 
dim forms of weary and sleepless pilgrims returning from 
Yasnaya. Although he was not present, he gathered from 
those who were there material for an interesting story. 

" All day long," he said, "from Zasyeka by forest paths 
and from Tula over the wide highway came the people 
singly and in groups, on foot and by carriage, to gather 
round this grave. From time to time some one would 
sing the Vyetchnaya Pdmyaf; heads were bared; the 
voices sounded sad and simple; then silence would ensue 
and all that could be heard would be the rustle of the few 
dry oak-leaves mingling with the low murmur of the 
subdued voices of men talking solemnly. ... In the 
general gossip about everyday affairs mingled streams of 
conversation about Tolstoi", who had passed forever away 
from this world into a world of endless mystery and 
eternal question. People talked about the great Russian 
writer and the fact that the good man wished 'to go 
thither' without Church rites, without incense, without 
the usual farewell of those whom the centuries and the 
millions of men have recognized as the official potentates 
of that invisible world with its mysteries and its judg- 
ments. 

"The talk on this subject was varied like the murmur 
of a varied human sea. But into the elemental wide 
note of this sea broke a new note; into millions of minds 
as yet untouched fell a new fact, and in millions of hearts 
stirred a new feeling. This thought and this feeling w r ere 
those of toleration. 

"As soon as I entered the third-class car to depart from 
Zasyeka and Yasnaya Polyana, I heard some one reading 
poetry. I could only make out snatches, but they pro- 
duced in me a strange sad feeling of disgust. I borrowed 
the paper: it was the Kursk Buil\ All the contents of 
this journal were in the style of the c Black Hundred' — 
reactionary and venomous. But even the 'Black 
Hundred' poet speaks of Tolstoi: — 



412 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Beneath his magic pen 

Alive his characters grow; 
With his genius' heavenly fire 

His every page is aglow. 

And though this stanza follows : — 

His high tempestuous soul 

In senseless conflict was tost, 
And in the forests of doubt 

His mighty talent was lost — 

still the author refrains from cursing him and does not 
let loose on his head all the powers of hell. But he 
says : — 

For all his errors and sins, 

To the merciful Trinity 
Russia's believing hearts 

Pray, 'Pardoned may he be.' 

"It is true," continues Korolenko, "it is only a transient 
gleam; but behold, there is he, under the fascination of a 
mighty spirit, flashing like heat-lightning over all the 
ancient ' Black Russia, ' down into depths and up on the 
heights, compelling her to recognize the man in the 
excommunicated, to admit the possibility of divine 
mercy and salvation without ecclesiastical intercession 
and even without the forgiveness of the Church. 

"It is true that Tolstoi is a genius, one of the highest 
pinnacles of humanity, and, since this victory of his, 
represents exclusively the triumph of genius. But we 
know how the sun first of all illumines the highest peaks, 
while on the plains below thick lie fog and gloom. It is 
indeed a good and encouraging symbol when above the 
gloom and fog even the illuminated peaks rise clearly !" 

Some have thought that Tolstoi's death was a tragedy, 
but it seems clear that in the course of time it will be 
recognized as the crowning glory of his life. To his family 
and immediate friends, unable at the time to look beyond 
the pathetic circumstances, it was of course a bitter thing; 
but in the great order of events, like the crucifixion of 
Christ, like the assassination of Lincoln, it concentrated 



THE FUNERAL 413 

into its final act the whole great drama of his moral evo- 
lution. Had he lived longer, still giving utterance to his 
views on all questions that would have arisen, and then 
have died under his own roof, surrounded by the luxuries 
against which he had in vain protested, there would have 
remained the serious doubt in the minds of many whether 
his diatribes against wealth were sincere. But his last 
great protest, involving with it the absolute renunciation 
of everything, was like the act of the hermit-king, who, 
having preserved the jeweled cup that reminds him of his 
past glory, at last gives that up also that there may be no 
material possession between his soul and God. 



CHAPTER IX 

ESTIMATES OE TOLSTOI* 

A tidal wave of sorrow swept over Russia and the 
whole world at the news of Tolstoi's death. Few men 
have ever been more sincerely mourned. To thousands 
who had never seen him it came as a personal bereave- 
ment. " What a tremendous, incomparable loss!" writes 
a Russian doctor, "and especially to us Russians. We 
could ill spare him, especially at the present day of almost 
utter reactionary demoralization, with no ray of hope for 
a better future. Not within my span of life (and I am 
forty) has the death of any great man been felt as a 
personal loss to the extent that Tolstoi's death is felt by 
all of us. I only hope that this death may serve as a sort 
of moral shock to awaken the dormant conscience of the 
Russian 'Intelligentsia' and bring it out of that stupor 
into which it has been plunged by the events of the last 
few years." 

The literary societies of Russia wished to celebrate his 
life and services, but in many cases the police interfered 
to prevent. At Voronezh a session of the Society of 
People's Universities, discussing what memorial to make, 
was closed. A women's school proposed to give the 
"Fruits of Enlightenment." It was forbidden. 

Even compressed air becomes dangerous, and the 
attempt of the government to repress the Russian 
intelligence cannot be successful forever. 

The exaggerated reports of scandalous family dis- 
sensions which were spread broadcast after Tolstoi's 
will was read, the story of the attempt of his relatives to 

* See Appendix III. 
414 



ESTIMATES OF TOLSTOI 415 

induce some American millionaire to buy Y£snaya 
Polyana at a ridiculously high price, the more or less 
fabulous accounts of interviews with Tolstoi before his 
death and with members of his family after his death, 
show how easily legends cluster about the memory of 
great men. 

Undoubtedly the family did desire to dispose of Yas- 
naya Polyana, but the idea of conferring it as a gift on the 
peasantry of the district, which was suggested by his 
daughter, was most in consonance with what were 
Tolstoi's own wishes. He loved his peasants and they, 
if at first suspicious of his motives in making himself one 
of them, came to adore him. The pleasantest picture that 
is preserved of Tolstoi engaged in his manifold activities 
is that where we see him advising, teaching, helping those 
who came to him under the great tree — the a Tree of the 
Poor" — at Y£snaya Polyana. 

Tolstoi's will related chiefly to his literary remains, 
his real estate and other property having been, as we 
have seen, divided among the members of his family. 
His unpublished manuscripts were left in trust to his 
daughter Aleksandra and his friends Tchertkdf and 
Strakhof, to be published for the benefit of humanity. 
They were said to consist of two complete novels, 
"Otyets Syergii" and "Hadji-Murat," the completed, 
though not wholly revised, second part of "The Cos- 
sacks," a story entitled "Dnyevnik Kiizmitcha" — "Kuz- 
mitch's Diary," which may have been intended to form a 
part of a historical novel relating to Katharine II., 
Alexander, Araktcheef and other well-known characters, 
and other manuscripts. Many passages from his stories 
mutilated by the censor — as for instance the " Sevastopol 
Sketches," "The Invaders," " Childhood and Boy- 
hood" and the "Recollections of a Billiard-marker," as 
well as chapters omitted for the same reason from "War 
and Peace" — were found in their original form and are 
to be published. 



4 i6 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Among Tolstoi's papers was a passage from his diary 
under date of April 8, 1895, in which he anticipates the 
formal expression of his desires regarding his burial and 
also disposes of his literary remains. Speaking of his diary 
he said: "The journal of my earlier bachelor life I ask 
to have destroyed and also whatever from the journals of 
my married life might, if published, be unpleasant to 
any one." He expressly states that he does this not 
because he wanted anything in his life concealed,, for he 
had only lived as all the young men in his own circle 
lived, but because he was afraid that these extracts 
might produce a false impression. He began to write, 
1 'They show me up ... ," but did not finish the 
sentence, and it is supposed that he meant to conclude it 
with "better than I was." Then he added, "Not- 
withstanding all the vileness of my life, still I was not 
abandoned by God and although I began only when 
well along in life to love and understand God." 

He explains that he does not give these directions as 
commands but only as a request because he believed that 
it would be good for all. " Do good," he says to his lega- 
tees, "do not do your own will; of course you are not as 
yet ready," and he makes it evident that the fact that 
what he produced during the ten years previous had been 
sold was excessively painful to him. 

But in June, 19 10, he made a strong effort to overcome 
his repugnance to the idea that his works should bring in 
money and provided that for a time, a very short time 
only, after his death, they might be sold under the pro- 
viso that as soon as the Yasnaya Polyana lands were 
turned over to the peasants then all his literary remains 
should "be given to the world." He requested that his 
friends should refrain from all praise of him and should 
prize only those passages where the power of God spoke 
through him, for at least then the Truth was delivered 
through him and "then were the happiest moments of 
his life." 



ESTIMATES OF TOLSTOI 417 

In the case of some men time is required to determine 
their relative position. In many instances a few years 
have seen a great shrinkage in reputations; in others they 
have risen like mountain peaks that have been hidden by 
too close proximity. As Tolstoi's tendency was to 
simplify and make little allowance for conditions, it 
becomes easy to put him into his place, which certainly 
belongs with the very greatest men of not only his time 
but of all time. One may qualify his life-work by all 
sorts of attenuations; one may strip it of a large part of its 
practicability for imitation; the very fact of its openness 
to criticism leaves the residue separate and clear. The 
good and bad of many men are like a chemical mixture, 
difficult to analyze and disentangle; others remind one of 
a nut where the shell entirely separates from the kernel. 
Tolstoi depicted himself with utter frankness. His 
growth, his changes in opinion, as he himself said, were a 
proof of his sincerity. 

He went through the whole gamut of human passions; 
who better, therefore, than he could know the dangerous 
music that those chords utter in the ears of men ? 

Practically even now we have Tolstoi's complete 
figure and can estimate him both as a novelist and as a 
philosopher. 

Not all will have the same opinion of him, either as a 
writer or a theologian. 

It is quite possible to agree that his style is often clumsy 
and tautological. He repeats himself; he gets tangled up 
in long sentences, which, however, are not so obscure in 
Russian as they are when translated into English; he is 
careless of details; he is, like Homer, fond of applying 
the same adjective again and again, as for instance the 
epithet "krasivoi," handsome, to every muzhik. He 
likes too much to indulge in long-winded digressions. 
He stands (at least in his two great novels) at the very 
antipodes to Turgenief. 

But, after all criticism is said, what a vivid touch he 



4i 8 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

has in descriptions; how skillfully he picks out the char- 
acteristics of his heroines, how certain his hand is in all 
analysis of motives, how dramatic his instinct! 

In the case of many of the Russian writers one can 
trace their literary pedigree. Just as one can trace 
Thackeray's literary kinship to Fielding, so the great 
masters of modern Russian fiction hark back to Gogol 
and to Pushkin. In all of them we find the cult of the 
"type" of which the Russian critics are always prating. 
Dickens delineated individual or exaggerated characters, 
but in Gogol's "Dead Souls," in Turgenief's artistic 
novels, beginning with the "Zapiski Okhotnika," in Gon- 
tcharof's "Oblomof ," and in the long and rather portentous 
lucubrations of Mikhailof (influenced though they are by 
Dickens), the heroes are recognized — they are types. 
Oblomof is such a perfect type of the lazy, easy-going 
Russian who does not bother to have his dishes washed 
because he will have to soil them again the next day, that 
the word oblomovism was coined to represent that essen- 
tially Slavic nature. So does Rudin stand for another, 
and one might mention scores of clear-cut characters, 
representing distinct sections of Russian life. 

Tolstoi puts before us one type — the representative of 
himself. That self-type, however, has so many phases 
that it is not monotonous as in the case of Byron's heroes. 
He tells what books had the greatest influence upon him 
but in his style it is difficult to recognize their pattern. If 
he was a realist, he was a realist like most of the Russian 
novelists. The conversations, particularly those of the 
peasants, seem to be registered almost phonographically. 
The memory and the note-book combine to give a 
dialogue of wonderful naturalness. And contrasted 
with the serious matter one finds the gay trivialities of 
fashionable society also caught with clever accuracy. 

One comes back after all to the universal judgment of 
those who read his novels understanding^ and appre- 
ciatively, that life itself is depicted. In this respect, 



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ESTIMATES OF TOLSTOI 419 

paradoxically, he is a creator, a poet, and as such will 
more and more stand forth as the greatest ever produced 
by Russia and one of the greatest in all modern times. 

Andrew D. White says that Tolstoi's chief defect was 
that, having lived for the most part in the interior of 
Russia and traveled little, he had developed opinions 
without modification by rational exchange of thought with 
other men. " Under such circumstances,' ' he says, "any 
man, no matter how noble and gifted, having given birth 
to striking ideas, cuddles them and pets them until they 
become the full-grown spoiled children of his brain. " 

But Tolstoi did not believe that travel was necessary 
for an intellectual man. The world came to him. He 
is constantly depicted as having violent discussions 
with the ablest men of his own country. These men who 
attacked him — men also from other lands — found him 
obstinately entrenched in his opinions and their argu- 
ments, however sound, only confirmed them. If 
Turgenief, living for a large part of his life in France, 
still retained to the last his Slavic character, still wrote 
books absolutely Russian in spirit, then we may be sure 
that travel would not have modified but would rather 
have intensified Tolstoi's idiosyncrasies. 

He was an individualist of the most pronounced type 
and an individualist he would have remained. He always 
stood aloof from concerted action with others. It was 
impossible for him to pull in harness. Hence he was 
oftentimes out of touch and oftentimes in ill favor with 
parties in Russia. He was alone. 

It is perhaps impossible to refrain from comparing him 
with other men. Many such comparisons were made at 
the time of his death. Anatole France, speaking of 
his ability to see with his spiritual eyes horizons invisible 
to other men, declares that in this respect he was like 
Homer, and like Homer is destined to live during all the 
ages to come. He also says that he will be to Russia 
what Voltaire has been to France. 



420 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Gerard Hauptmann placed him on the same level 
with Buddha, with Martin Luther and with the other 
great reformers of the world. Octave Mirbeau called 
him "the giant of universal literature, through whose 
writings, all of them, like a beautiful thread ran his love 
and sympathy for mankind." 

The well-known French dramatist, Henri Bataille, 
compared him to Moses who by a blow of his rod caused 
the healing waters to gush forth from the rock. 

Jules Claretie compared him to the Wandering Jew, 
with the sole difference that Tolstoi, "the apostle of 
forgiveness and mercy, became the 'tramp' of world- 
wide sympathy." 

Doctor Kralik, of Vienna, the greatest living repre- 
sentative of clerical philosophy, though he regarded him 
as a "sectant" in religion and art, and though he declared 
that all sectants being "rigorists" were laboring under 
error, though he called him an "Utopian" in that while 
he had the highest intentions he nevertheless forgot that 
the sufferings of humanity were inevitable, at the same 
time indirectly compared him to Christ and said that his 
crown of thorns was his desire to depart from this life. 
His services, he said, consisted in his awakening of the 
human conscience, his demand for essential reforms. 

Prof essor Ludwig Stein, of Berlin, declared that human- 
ity had lost in Tolstoi an apostle, a saint, whom in days to 
come the Church would canonize, and predicted that 
Nietzsche, Bjornson and Ibsen would shine pallid in 
the bright image of the greatest of their contemporaries. 

Leopold von Schroder, Professor of Philosophy at 
Vienna, called him the Russian Buddha. "He was the 
Prometheus Bound, the great martyr and at the same 
time the marvelous conqueror, enlightening the world. 
Notwithstanding his lack of success in the practical 
accomplishment of his ideals, Tolstoi' gave a great 
impulse to the world. Only Philistines can regard him 
as a visionary. Such a visionary was Christ." 



ESTIMATES OF TOLSTOI 421 

Perhaps the most obvious and striking likeness that 
one can find among the men of the past with whom to 
compare Tolstoi* is Jean- Jacques Rousseau, and one can- 
not avoid the thought that the impulse to many of the 
great Russian writer's idiosyncrasies must have come 
from the author of "Emile," whom Tolstoi so adored 
in his early youth. 

If the comparison be only superficial, it is certainly, 
remarkable. As children both Rousseau and Tolstoi 
were left to be brought up by relatives. Both Rousseau 
and Tolstoi were impelled to examine into the claims of 
various forms of religion. Both taught, and not having 
had the right training for teaching both failed, recogniz- 
ing their failure and its cause. Both in their early days 
lived immoral lives and described their evil deeds with 
vivid details in their journals. Both were interested in 
music. Rousseau wrote a hymn tune (" Rousseau's 
Dream"); Tolstoi composed a waltz. Rousseau in his 
" Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" denounced all 
culture, literary, scientific, musical or graphic, as directly 
leading to corruption; Tolstoi's views on Progress, 
on Literature, Painting and Music are not dissimilar. 

Rousseau in his " Discourse on the Origin of In- 
equality" argues that all civilization is a state of social 
degradation and that the ignorant condition of the savage 
is the ideal of simplicity and perfection. Rousseau 
declared all property to be the result of one man's 
violently taking it from others; that all wealth is a 
crime, all government tyranny, all social laws unjust. 
In order to give emphasis to these views he lived in 
the humblest manner, dressed shabbily and acted 
churlishly to show his independence; he also quarreled 
with his friends; his views on rulers and government 
expressed in his " Contrat Social" and in " Emile," while 
giving him his reputation, made him obnoxious to the 
State; and his revolutionary teaching about religion 
caused him to be persecuted by the Church. He fled 



422 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

from his own country and died under tragic circum- 
stances. 

In nearly all these particulars there is a parallel in 
Tolstoi's life. Rousseau made lace; Tolstoi* made boots. 
Rousseau's later views on education were revolutionary; 
so were Tolstoi's. 

This comparison is based on the external conditions 
of their lives rather than on their ethical and religious 
teachings. Tolstoi's are immeasurably higher than 
Rousseau's. 

It is interesting to notice as time goes on that the world 
has rapidly settled down into the opinion that Tolstoi, 
great, perhaps incomparably great, as he is as a novel- 
ist, is great principally as one of the mightiest moral 
forces of his day in concrete human form. Occasionally 
a Churchman will be found like Cardinal Vanutelli, who 
confesses his own narrowness and ignorance by declaring, 
"I do not know Tolstoi, I have never read one of his 
books;" but the Church especially must stand up before 
his ideal and be judged by his inexorable Truth. Inde- 
pendent Thought has the right to criticise his premises 
and find fault with his Weltanschauung; but those that 
claim to follow the Carpenter of Nazareth who had not 
where to lay his head, who was the friend of publicans 
and sinners, who preached the Gospel of Peace, must ask 
themselves, "Wherein are we Christians?" 

Tolstoi has put before the world his touchstone of 
Truth. It may well be that it is not of universal appli- 
cation. 

If every man could be absolutely independent of every 
other, each little circle or globule of personality not touch- 
ing any other or blending with others, then the simplicity* 

* His simplification of everything is shown in a definition of religion 
expressed in a letter written in English to John Coleman Kenworthy: 
"Christianity for to be powerful (sic) must be pure from all melange — of 
Dogmatism, Sentimentalism, Evangelism, as well as of Socialism, 
Anarchy, or Philanthropism." He taught that the greatest enemy of 
humanity is social Democracy. 



ESTIMATES OF TOLSTOI 423 

of his ideal life would be practicable. But life is com- 
plicated. There is one glory of the sun and another 
glory of the moon, and it seems hardly desirable that all 
men should be brought down to a dead level of uni- 
formity. The poor man who possesses the true philos- 
ophy of life can feel no bitterness against those who 
have more than he. There are always compensations, 
and happiness, like the air, is fairly well divided among 
all who fulfill the laws of nature. Just as the healthy 
man is unconscious of his bodily functions, so may any 
one attain the Nirvana of delight even in this Samsara of 
physical existence and can at least be happy in making 
others happy. In this way only does the Oiseau Bleu 
settle in his nest. 

The story of Tolstoi's struggles to conquer his passions, 
his failures, the undoubted truths that he inculcated, 
aside from the extremes to which he went, his clear 
summons to do the right thing, his courage in upholding 
his views, his unbounded generosity, the love that he 
manifested to humanity at large, all combine to make 
him a tremendous influence in the world. He caused 
millions of men to think for themselves and woke them 
from complacent selfish dreams to realize their responsi- 
bilities. The good that he advocated was so good that 
it cannot fail to better the world. One may not be able 
to accept all of his teaching, and it would be undoubtedly 
a misfortune if many should follow him to the full length; 
but the gold in the sand is distinct and precious, and it is 
easy to sift it out and add it to the riches of human 
thought. 



APPENDIX I 

CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF COUNT LYOF 
NIKOLAYEVITCH TOLSTOI 

N.S. 

1822. Marriage of Count Nikolai Ilyitch Tolstoi and the 

Princess Mariya Nikolayevna Volkonskaya. 

1823. Nikolai Nikolayevitch Tolstoi" (Nikolenka) born. 

1826. Sergye'i Nikolayevitch Tolstoi (Seryozha) born. 

1827. Dmitri Nikolayevitch Tolstoi (Mitenka) born. 

1828. September 9. Lyof (Leo) Nikolayevitch Tolstoi' 

born. 
1830. Countess Marya Nikolayevna Tolstaya born. 
1830. March 19. Death of Tolstoi's mother. 
1833. The idea of the " Ant-Brotherhood. " 
1837. Death of Count Nikolai Ilyitch Tolstoi and of the 

grandmother Tolstaya, n£e Princess Gortchakova. 
1841. Death of the Tolstois' guardian, the Countess Osten- 

Saken. Family moves to Kazan. 

1844. L. N. becomes a student of Turkish- Arabic languages 

in the Philosophical Faculty of Kazan University. 

1845. Transfers to Law Faculty. Ceases to believe in 

prayer or go to church. Writes essay comparing 
Montesquieu's "De l'Esprit des Lois" with Kath- 
arine's Viliki Nakdz; Commentary on Rousseau's 
Discussions. 

1846. Becomes dissatisfied with his manner of life. 

1847. Leaves the university. Stays at Y£snaya Polyana 

with his Aunt Tatyana Yorgolskaya (Erglskaya). 

1848. Passes two examinations at Petersburg. Plans to 

enter regiment of horse-guards. Returns to Yas- 
naya. 

1849. Starts school for Peasant children at Yasnaya. 

1850. "Living an animal but not wholly disorderly existence, 

abandoning all occupations, vacant in mind." 

425 



426 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

1851. May 2. Departs for the Caucasus. Autumn at 

Tiflis, writing " Childhood. " 

1852. Jan. Appointed Junker in Fourth Battery of Artil- 

lery. — Prefers simplicity (firostotd) above all other 
qualities. — " Childhood" {Dyetstvo) comes out in 
Sovremennik (" Contemporary") under initials 
L. N. T. September 18, "The Cossacks" {Kazaki) 
begun. 

1853. Jan. Writes "The Raid" (Nabyeg). Serves against 

Shamyl. March 2, nearly killed by grenade. 
"The Raid" appears in the Sovremennik. Writes 
"Recollections of a Billiard Marker" {Zapiski 
Markyora). July to Oct., stays at the mineral 
springs of Pyatigorsk (Besh-tau). Quite dissat- 
isfied with his mode of life; determines to change it. 
War between Russia and Turkey, 

1854. Jan. 25. Passes his officer's examination. — Feb., at 

Yasnaya. — March, starts for Bukharest. — At Siege 
of Silistria. — French and English land at Crimea 
(Sept. 26) — Oct., "Boyhood" {Cjtrotchestvo) pub- 
lished in Sovremennik. — Tolstoi reaches Sevastopol. 

1855. Jan. "Recollections of a Billiard Marker" {Zapiski 

Markyora) published.— May 2 5- June, serves in 
Fourth Bastion. — June, "Sevastopol in December" 
Sevastopol f Dekabrye) — Aug. "Sevastopol in 
August" {Sevastopol f Av gusty e) — Sept., "The Cut- 
ting of the Forest" {Rubka Lyesa). — Russians aban- 
don Sevastopol — Tolstoi returns to Petersburg with 
despatches. — March 17, conceives idea of founding 
a new religion. — First meeting with Fyet. 

1856. "Sevastopol in May" {Sevastopol f Maye). — Jan. 

Death of brother Dmitry — March, peace declared — 
March, "The Snow Storm" (MetySP)-Mzy, "Two 
Hussars" {Dva Guss&ri) — Dec, Tolstoi' leaves the 
army — Dec, "Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance" 
{Vstretcha f Otradnom) — Dec, "The Morning of a 
Proprietor" (JJtro pomyeshchika written in 1852). 

1857. Jan. "Youth" {Yunost'). Feb.-Aug., Journey abroad. 

— Sept., " Lucerne "(Iz Zapisok Kn. Nyekhlyudova). 

1858. Visits Petersburg and Moscow. — March, helps found 

the Moscow Musical Society. — Aug., "Albert" (writ- 



APPENDIX I 427 

ten in Jan.) — Signs Resolution of the 105 nobles 
regarding Emancipation. 

1859. Jan. 3. Encounter with infuriated bear. — Writes 

" Three Deaths" (Tri Smerti). — Feb. 16, Address on 

v Art before Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. 

— April, "Family Happiness" (Seme'inoye Stchastye) 

— Establishes school at Yasnaya. 

i860. Summer: Berlin, Dresden, Kissingen. — Oct. 2, Niko- 
lai Nikolayevitch T. dies at Hyeres. — Visits Florence, 
Rome, Naples, Marseilles. — Writes "Polikushka" — 
Writes "Necrolog of Dr. Visnevsky. " 

1 86 1. Paris, London; meets Herzen. — May, returns to Rus- 

sia. — June 7: challenges Turgenief. — Arbiter or 
Umpire of the Peace (Mirovoi posrednik) of Fourth 
section of the Krapivensky District. — Writes "Khol- 
stomyer." 

1862. Feb. Yasnaya Poly ana magazine appears — Attacks 

progress: "The Law of Progress or Perfection is 
written in the soul of every man and only in conse- 
quence of error is carried over into history. Left to 
the individual, this law is useful and practicable for 
every one; transported into history it becomes empty, 
foolish balderdash, leading to the justification of 
every kind of absurdity and fantasy" (from Yasnaya 
Poly ana) . 
May. Discharged from office of Arbiter — Goes to 
Samara for kumys cure. — Police Raid on Yasnaya. — 
Oct. 5: marries Sofiya Andreyevna Behrs (Bers, 
Beers) — ("A happy and a new, entirely new man. ") 
Abandons school. Loses 1000 rubles at Chinese 
billiards — Raises money on "The Cossacks" — 
"Concerning Popular Education "(O narodnom Ob- 
razovanii) — "Concerning Methods of Teaching 
Reading" (O Metodakh obutcheniya Gramotye) — 
"Project of a General Scheme of Popular Schools" 
(Proyekt obshchavo Plana narodnuikh Utchilishch) — 
"Education and Culture" (Vospitdniye i Obrazo- 
vdniye) — "Progress and the Definition of Culture" 
(Pr ogres i Opredyelyeniye Obrazovdniya) — "Whom 
shall the Art of Writing be Taught by — by Peasant 
children to us or by us to Peasant Children? (Romuu 



428 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Kovo utchifsa Pisat : Krestyanskim Rebyatam u nas 
Hi Nam u Krestyanskikh Rebydt?) — "Yasnaya 
Polyana School in November and December" 
(Yasnopolyanskaya Shkola za Noyabr' i Dyekabr'). 

1863. Jan. "The Cossacks" (Kazaki)— Feb., "Polikush- 

ka " — " Dekabrists " (Dekabristui) begun. — July, 
eldest son, Sergyei' Lvovitch born. Writes two 
comedies: "The Nihilist" {Nihilist) and "The In- 
fected Family " (Zarazhennoye Semeyestvo) . ' ' Son — 
of little interest (tnalo blizok) to me. " " Choice long 
made: Literature, Art, Pedagogics, Family. Incon- 
sistency, timidity, laziness, weakness — my enemies." 

1864. "War and Peace" (Vo'ind i Mir) begun. — Collected 

edition of works in four volumes. — Oct., birth of 
eldest daughter, Tatyana Lvovna. 

1865. First part of "War and Peace" — Visits Borodino. — 

"I begin to love my son" — Worried by the symp- 
toms of famine among the people. 

1866. May. Second son, Ilya Lvovitch born. — June, defends 

the soldier, Vasili Shibunin before Court Martial. 
Shibunin executed August 21. 

1867. Goes to Moscow for the winter. Still troubled with 

ill health. 

1868. "War and Peace " having great vogue (three vols. pub. 

this year). Plans his Primer (Azbuka). 

1869. June 1. Third son, Lyof Lvovitch born. Nov., sixth 

and last vol. "War and Peace. " Begins writing and 
translating stories for children. Begins special 
study of the Drama. 

1870. Takes up study of Greek. 

187 1. Feb. 24. Second daughter, Marya Lvovna born. 

Studying Greek from morning till night. Summer 
at Samara for kumys. Meets Hadji- Murat. Buys 
2000 acres of virgin land. Reads the Koran. 
"Regarding the Samara Famine" (O Samarskom 
Golodye). 

1872. "My Azbuka gives me no leisure for other occupa- 

tions." — "These days I am driven wild with trying 
to finish my Arithmetic." — "I am convinced that I 
have erected a monument in my 'A'zbuka.' " 
Jan. Starts school again. — "God Sees the Truth" 



APPENDIX I 429 

(Bog pravdn vidit, da nye skoroSkazhet) — " A Prisoner 
in the Caucasus" (Kavkazsky Plennik) — Fourth son, 
Piotr Lvovitch born June 25. — September, confined 
to Yasnaya by Magistrate because of truculent bull. 
— Threatens to go to live in England. — Nov., "Az- 
buka. — Plans novel of Peter the Great's time. — 
Plans bast-shoe University for peasantry. — Terribly 
depressed. 

1873. May. Goes with family to Samara — Samara Famine. 

Appeals for funds. March 31, "Anna Kardnina" 
begun. — Kramskoi's portrait of L. N. T. — Nov. 21, 
Death of son Piotr. 

1874. Jan. 27. Speaks before Moscow Society of Literacy on 

the Teaching of Reading. April 4, fifth son, Nikolai 
Lvovitch born. — July 2, death of Aunt Tatyana 
Yorgolskaya. — Pub. article "On Popular Education" 
(1875?). (Q narodnom Obrazovanii) . — Busied with 
Educational affairs. — Enters Zemstvo. — Buys addi- 
tional land at Nikolskoye; tries to borrow 10,000 
rubles on mortgage of Fyet. Fyet refuses. 

1875. "New Primer" (Nov ay a Xzbuka). — Four Russian 

Reading Books. — Four Slavonic Reading Books. — 
March 4, death of Nikolai Lvovitch — First in- 
stalment of "Anna Karenina" — Summer: Horse- 
races on Samara estate. — Nov. 13, third daughter, 
Varvara Lvovna born and dies. Dec, death of 
Aunt Pelageya Yushkova. 

1876. Conversation with the priest Vasily Ivanovitch; begins 

to attend Church services. — Four new instalments 
of "Anna Karenina." — Lack of mental tranquility. 
— Buys horses in Orenburg. — Dec, meets Piotr 
Ilyitch Tchaikovsky — Goes to Moscow to learn 
about the War (between Russia and Turkey). — 
Quarrels with Katkof. 

1877. Final installments of "Anna Karenina" — Summer: 

Pays first visit to the Optin Pustuin or Hermitage — 
Tormented with spiritual problems — Dec. 18., 
sixth son, Andrei Lvovitch born. 

1878. Writes second beginning of "The Dekabrists." — 

May, renews relations with Turgenief — June 15, 
"Yesterday I wrote a good deal in a little boot. I 



43o THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

myself do not know why — on Faith. " Aug. 19, 
Turgenief at Ydsnaya. — Engages V. G. Alekseyef, 
a socialist, as tutor for his sons. — " First Recollec- 
tions" (Pyervuiya Vospomindniya). — Writing "Con- 
fession" (Ispovyed) — Summer with family at Samara. 
November: Busy writing; "his eyes fixed and 
strange; he scarcely talks at all; has entirely 
ceased to belong to this world" (Letter from Count- 
ess). 

1879. June. Makes pilgrimage to the catacomb-monastery 

at Ki£f — Visits Fyet. — Many visitors at Yasnaya: 
"All, including myself, were gay" — Autumn, aban- 
dons Church fasting. "Alas! he is writing some sort 
of religious discussion. He reads and thinks until 
his head aches, and all to show how incompatible the 
Church is with the Gospel teachings. Hardly ten 
people in Russia will be interested in it; but nothing 
can be done about it. I only wish he would make 
haste and finish it and that it would pass like an 
illness" (Letter from Countess) . 

1880. Jan. 1. Tenth child, Mikhail Lvovitch born. — Spring: 

Refuses to take part in Pushkin Jubilee. — Visit from 
Turgenief — Writes "A Criticism of Dogmatic 
Theology (Kritika dogmatitcheskava Bogosloviya). 
— "Summer and a charming Summer and as usual I 
become intoxicated with life and forget my work." 

1881. Letter to the Emperor Alexander III. in behalf of 

the tsaricides. "Concordance and Translation of 
the Four Gospels" (Soyedineniye i Perevdd Che- 
tuirekh Yevangelii). — "He has very much changed. 
He has become a most sincere and ardent Christian. 
But he has grown gray; his health is worse and he is 
quieter and more depressed" (Letter from Countess) 
— June, pilgrimage on foot to Optin-Pustuin. — July: 
"I am not well. Have not slept or eaten anything 
solid for four days. Have tried to feel happy. Dif- 
ficult but possible. I am conscious of making prog- 
ress toward it" (Diary) — Visits Turgenief at Spas- 
skoye. "Short Exposition of the Gospels" (Krdtkoye 
Izlozheniye Yevangeliya) "What Men Live by" 
(Tchyetn Liudi Zhivui). — Nov. 12, eleventh child, 



APPENDIX I 431 

Aleksei* Lvovitch born. Goes to Samara; finds in- 
spection of property "an unendurable occupation. " 
— Discusses with the Molokans — September: Tur- 
g£nief at Yasnaya: dances the cancan. "I often 
wish to die" (Diary) Autumn: Family settles in 
hired house at Moscow. Oldest son enters uni- 
versity of Moscow. — L. N. goes to Tver; meets 
Sutayef — Saws wood for exercise. 

1882. Acquaintance with Gay and Mikhailovsky. — Slum- 

ming in Moscow — Writes "The Census in Moscow" 
(O Perepisi f Moskvye) — Addresses Moscow Duma 
on destitution — Censor destroys printed sheets of 
"My Confession" — Summer at Yasnaya; takes part 
in "Post-box" sport — Autumn: Buys house in 
Moscow for 36,000 rubles. — Studies Hebrew with 
Rabbi Minor. "I am very deeply grieved about it: 
he wastes his energies on trifles" (Letter from 
Countess) — Drops use of title. — Letter to M. A. 
Engelhardt on Non-resistance — (Pismo k N. A T .) — 
"If the seed is of God, then no doubt it will grow 
(Diary)" — Writes Church and State (Tserkov' i 
Gosudarstvo); "The Kingdom of God" {Tsarstvo 
Bozhiye); "In what consists Happiness?" (F 
Tchyem Stchastye?) 

1883. January: writing "What do I believe?" or "My 

belief" {F Tchyem moyd Vyera?) — "He is a leader: 
one who goes ahead of the crowd, pointing the 
way men should go. But I am the crowd; I 
live in its current. ... I cannot go faster; 
I am held by the crowd and by my environ- 
ment and habits." (Letter from Countess.) Fire 
at Yasnaya — Tolstoi sought by many titled imi- 
tators and others. May: goes to Samara. "I 
am in a serious, not joyful but tranquil mood 
and cannot live without work — Letter from Tur- 
genief: "My friend — great writer of the Russian 
land — listen to my appeal." — Sept. 3, death of 
Turgenief. — L. N. refuses, from religious scruples, 
to serve on Krapivny jury: fined 100 rubles. — Pre- 
pares paper on Turgenief s literary career. Nov. 
4, lecture before Soc. Lovers of Rus. Lit. can- 



432 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

celed by Police. — Takes first lesson in shoe-mak- 
ing — celebrates it by dancing a waltz. — Makes 
acquaintance of V. G. Tchertkdf. 

1884. Jan. Prints fifty copies of "My Belief" which are 

confiscated by the Ecclesiastical Censor, three 
fragments of "Dekabrists" published. Gay paints 
TVs portrait. — June 30, daughter Aleksandra 
Lvovna born. — L. N.'s first attempt to escape from 
" intolerable luxury." — Proposes to turn estate over 
to his wife — Visits Gay at Tchernigof — Makes 
acquaintance of P. I. Biryukdf — Musical and Art 
evenings at the Kham6vniki house — Countess pub- 
lishes TVs works. 

1885. Visits the Crimea with Prince L. D. Urusof. — Founds 

"The Mediator" (Posrednik) Publishing Society — 
Writes "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Utcheniye 
Dvenddtsati Aposioloj) — Publishes: "Three Hermits" 
(Tri Startsa) ; "If you Neglect the Fire, it Spreads" 
(Upustish' Ogon — Nye Potushisti ,) — "Where Love 
is, there God is Also" (GdyeLiubov' Tarn i Bog) — 
"Two Old Men" (Dva Starikd)— "The Candle" 
(Svyetchka) — Texts for Wood-Cuts — "Two Brothers 
and Gold" (Dva Brata i Zoloto) — "Maidens Wiser 
than Old Men" (Dyevotchki Umneye Starikdf) — 
Autum: William Frey (V. K. Heins) visits at Yasnaya. 
L. N. becomes vegetarian; gives up hunting and 
tobacco. 

1886. Jan. 30. Death of Aleksei' Lvovitch — Feb. 26, 

finishes "What are we to Do then?" (Tak Shto zhe 
Nam DyelaP?) begun in '84. — June 3: "I am writing 
a continuation of 'What then are we to do?' and 
booklets for the people" (From letter) — "Ilyas" — 
"The Temptation of Christ in the Desert" (Is- 
kusheniye Khrista f Pustuinye) — "The sufferings of 
Christ" (Straddniya Khrista) — "The Lord's Sup- 
per" (Tainaya V etcher') — "The Death of Ivan 
1 1 y i t c h " (Smert Ivana Ilyitcha) — " Concerning 
Women" (O Zhenshchinakh) — "Concerning Charity" 
(O Blagotvorityelnosti)— "The Tale of Iv£n the 
Fool" (Skazka ob Ivanye Durakye) — "How the 
Little Devil Got Back His Crust" (Kak Tchertyonoh 



APPENDIX I 433 

krayushku Vuikupdl) — " The First Distiller" (Pyervui 
Vinokur, for popular Theater) — "The Repentant 
Sinner" (Kayushchysa Gryeshnik) — "A Seed Like a 
Hen's Egg" (Zyemo s Kurinoye Ya'itsd) — "Does a 
Man need Much Land?" (Mnogo li Tchelovyeku 
Zemli Nuzhno?) — "The Godson" (Kryestnik) — 
"Nicholas Stick" (Nikolai Palkin) — Supplement to 
Nikolai Palkin— "To Whom do we Belong?" (Tchyi 
Mui?)—" Different Beliefs" (O Raznuikh Vyerakh) 
— "To Young People" (K Moloduim Liudyam) — 
"The Power of Darkness" (Vlast' Tmui)— Com- 
piles "Popular Calendar" — Spring: Walks with 
young Gay from Moscow to Yasnaya — Summer: — 
Arrival of Feinermann — Hay-making and barn- 
building — Visits from George Kennan and D£roulede 
— and M. A. Stakhovitch — L. N. seriously ill w r ith 
erysipelas — Nov 12, "All goes well with me. I am 
happy. God gives me too much" (from Letter 
to Gay) — Countess Marya Lvovna qualifies as a 
Primary School teacher. 

1887. Jan. "The Power of Darkness" forbidden. — Oct. 4, 

Silver Wedding — Autumn: Ryepin's first portrait of 
L.N. (in wadded Dressing-gown), also "Tolstoi plow- 
ing" — Founds Temperance Society; addresses Psy- 
chological Society — "In WTiat Consists Truth in 
Art?" (V tchyem Pravda f Iskusstvye) — Publishes 
"Calendar with Proverbs" (Kalenddr s Poslovi- 
tsami)— "On Life" (O Zhizni)—"Uie and Death" 
(O Zhizni i Smerti) — "Walk in the Light" (Khoditef 
Svyetye) — "Letter to the Young Ladies of Tiflis. — 
"Emelyan the Workman" (Rabotnik Yemelydn) — 
"Three Sons" (Tri Suina) — Writes "The Hollow 
Drum" (Pustoi Barab&n) — "Power of Darkness" 
privately performed. 

1888. Introduction to the Works of Bondaref ("Industry 

and Idleness") — Letter to a Frenchman ("Manual 
Labor and Intellectual Activity": Rutchno'i Trud i 
Umstvennaya Deyatelnosf). — Feb. 22, "The Power 
of Darkness" performed at Antoine's Theatre libre 
in Paris — April 12, ninth son, Ivan Lvovitch born. 



434 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

— Writes " Culture's Holiday " (Prazdnik Prosvyesh- 
cheniya) — " Kholstomyer " published (written 1861). 

1889. "Time to Reform!" (Pora Opomnitsa) — " Address to 

Our Brethren" (Obrashcheniye k Liudyam-bratyam) 
— "Love to God and One's Neighbor" (Liubvi k 
Bogu i Blizhnemu) — "The Kreutzer Sonata" — 
"The Fruits of Culture" (Plodui Prosvyeshcheniya) 
— Introduction to A. I. Yershof's "Recollections of 
Sevastopol" — Letter to a Revolutionist. — Corre- 
spondence with Adin H. Ballou (on Non-resistance). 

1890. Jan. 9. "Kreutzer Sonata" read aloud at Yasnaya. 

Jan. 11, T.'s children and others give first per- 
formance of "Fruits of Culture" at Yasnaya. — Also 
given at Tula, and at Tsarskoye Selo before the Im- 
perial family. — Ryepin paints picture of Tolstoi in 
his room; also models bust of him. — Summer: Visits 
Optin Pustuin. — Emperor gives Countess permis- 
sion to pub. "Kreutzer Sonata" in collected works 
only. — Bondar^f, Henry George: for Vengerofs 
"Biographical Dictionary." — New ending to Legend 
"Forty Years" by Kostomarof — Postscript to 
"Kreutzer Sonata" — Introduction to Dr. Alice 
Stockham's " Tokology "—" Why do Men Stupefy 
Themselves?" (Dlya Tchevo Liudi Odurtndniva- 
yutsa?) — "Community and Commune" (Obshchina 
i Mir) — L. N. attacked by Clergy as Anti-Christ. 

1891. Feb. 5. First performance of "Fruits of Culture at 

Moscow Little Theater. — Oct. 1, L. N. divides 
property among his wife and children — Begins 
Famine-relief- work. — "The Coffee-House of Surat" 
(Le Cafe de Surate), free translation from B. de St. 
Pierre.— "Too Dear" {Trop Cher) from De Mau- 
passant. — Famine articles — Sept., "Fruits of Culture" 
at Alexandrinsky Theater. 

1892. Famine Articles: "Help to the Starving" (Pomoshch 9 

Golodnuim); "A Terrible Problem" (Strashnui 
Vopros); "Among the Needy" (Sredi Nuzhdayu- 
shchikhsye) — " The First Step, in Favor of Vegetarian- 
ism" (Pyrevaya Stupyen?) — "Francoise" {Notre 
Dame des Vents) from De Maupassant. — Asked to 
write more plays: "I feel certain the Censor would 



APPENDIX I 435 

not pass my plays. You would not believe how from 
the very beginning of my activity that horrible censor 
question has tormented me." — Article in London 
Daily Telegraph raises storm; L. N. in danger of in- 
carceration at Suzdal Monastery. — June 30: Work- 
ing on "The Kingdom of God is within You." 
"My ideas have not as yet completed their strange 
necessary and to me unexpected development. (Let- 
ter to Gay.) — Preface to Howard Williams's "Ethics 
of Diet." — " Conversation among Leisurely People." 
— "Reason and Religion" (Letter to Baron Rosen). 
— Suggests publishing a "Miscellany" to aid the 
starving peasantry. 

1893. Conclusion to "Account of Sustenance for the Starv- 

ing"— "The Kingdom of God is Within You" 
(Tsarstvo Bozhiye Vntitri Vas) — Significance of Re- 
fusal of Military Service" (Znatcheniye Otkaza ot 
Voenno'i Sluzhbui) . — "Non-acting " (Nedyelaniye) — 
"The Freedom of the Will" (K Voprosu Svobodye 
Voli) — "Ripened Ears" (Speluiye Kolosya) (a col- 
lection of thoughts and aphorisms from L. N.'s 
private letters, etc.) . Preface to Tr. of Amiel — "The 
Demands of Love" (Trebovaniya Liubvi, from 
Diary.) 

1894. Feb. Death of E. N. Drozhzhin (the schoolmaster 

who refused military service and suffered persecu- 
tion) — June, death of the artist N. N. Gay — 
"Christianity and Patriotism" (Khristianstvo i Pa- 
triotizm) — "Religion and Morality" (Religiya i 
Nrdvstvennosf) — "Reason and Religion" (Razum i 
Religiya) — Translation of Mazzini's Letter on Im- 
mortality — Translation of Paul Carus's "Karma, 
A Buddhist Legend" — Preface to works of Guy de 
Maupassant — Spring: writes "Master and Man" 
(Khozyain i Rabotnik) . 
1895 March 5. Death of Son Ivan. — July 11, Dukhobortsui 
attacked by Cossacks — Writes Letter to London 
Times on "A Persecution of Christians in Russia." 
— Preface to Life and Death of E. N. Drozhzhin 
—"Three Parables" {Tri Pritchi)— Preface to Tales 
of S. T. Semyonof — Postscript to "Persecution of 



436 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Christians" — Letter to P. V. Virigin (leader of the 
Dukhobors) — Letter toaPole (M. Ursin) — " Shame" 
(Stuidno). — Dec, "Help" {Pomogite) pub. by Biryu- 
kof, Tregubof, and Tchertkdf. 

1896. First public performance of "Power of Darkness" — 

July, visit of Miss Jane Addams at Yasnaya — 
"Patriotism or Peace" (P. Hi Mir) (Letter to Man- 
son). — Letter to Ernest Crosby — "Ecclesiastical De- 
ception" (O Tserkovnom Obmanye) — Letter to the 
Ministers — "How to Read the Gospels" (Kak 
Tchitdf Yevdngeliye) — Letter to the Liberals — 
"The Beginning (or Approach) of the End" (Pribli- 
zheniye Kontsd) — Letter to the editor of a German 
Journal — Second Letter to P. V. Virigin— Letter to 
the Commander of the Irkutsk Disciplinary Division 
— Letter to the Commander of the Yekat. Dis. Div. 
— "Relation to Legal and Governmental Order. — 
Afterword to "Help."— "For God or Mammon" 
(Bogu Hi Mamonu) . 

1897. Pan-Russian Missionary Congress pronounces Tol- 

stoism to be a harmful sect. — Threats of assassination 
— " The Christian Teaching" (Khristyanskoye Utche- 
niye) — "Tolstoism" (O Tolstovstvye, from Diary) 
—"What is Art?" (Shto Takoye Iskusstvo?)— The 
same with variants — (Also called "Art and Not- 
Art") — June: Marriage of Marya Lvovna to 
Prince N. L. Obolyensky. — Again plans to leave 
home: letter to Countess (Posthumous). 

1898. Canadian Government agrees to receive Dukhobors — 

Consents to prepare novel "Resurrection" (Voskrese- 
niye) "in old manner" for publication in behalf of 
the Dukhobors — "Carthago delenda est" — 'Fam- 
ine or No-famine" {Golod Hi nye Golod) — "Two 
Wars" (Dvye Voinui) — Letters to Feinermann (in 
Recollections of Teneromo) — Preface to E. Car- 
penter's "Modern Science" — Letter to a Non- 
commissioned Officer. 

1899. Dukhobor Migration, superintended by Count Sergyei 

Lvovitch from Batum — "Three Relations to Life" 
(Tri Otnosheniye k Zhizni) — Letter on Hague Con- 
ference — "Resurrection" — Letter to V. A. Vlasof — 



APPENDIX I 437 

"Regarding the Transvaal War" — " Religious Edu- 
cation" {O Religioznom Vospitdnii). — Nov., mar- 
riage of Countess Tatyana Lvovna to M. S. Sukhotin 
(Soohoteen). 

1900. April: Secret Circular Holy Synod, forbidding clergy 

to perform religious services for L. N. T. — 111 with 
influenza and liver trouble — Thoughts concerning 
Education and Teaching {Muisli Vospitanii i 
Obutchenii) — " Concerning Suicide" {O Samoubii- 
stvye) — "Thoughts concerning God" {Muisli 
Bogye)* — "Patriotism and the Government" {P. i 
Pravityelstvo) — Letter to the Director of a Popular 
School — "The Slavery of Our Time" {Rabstvo 
Ndshevo V Yemeni) — "Thou Shalt not Kill" {Nye 
Ubi'i). (Relating to the assassination of King Hum- 
bert of Italy. Edition seized and destroyed in 
Germany.) — "Where is the Way Out?" {Gdye Vui- 
khod?) — "Is it really so Necessary?" {Nyeuzheli tak 
Nado?) 

1 901. March 7. Decree of Excommunication — Protest of 

Countess — L. N. T.'s Reply — University Disturb- 
ances — Letter to Prince L. D. Vyazemsky (Com- 
mending him for his attitude) — March 25, Union 
of Russian Writers dissolved. — Appeal to the Em- 
peror, March 28 — Visit from Senator Beveridge — 
Visit from Andrew D. White — Summer: serious ill- 
ness — Aug., goes to Crimea. — Works on "Hadji 
Murat." — "Reason, Faith and Prayer" {O Rdzumye, 
Vyerye i Molitvye) — "The Clockmaker" {Tchasov- 
shchik) — "The Significance of Life"* {O Smuislye 
Zhizni) — "The Only Means" {Yedinstvennoye Sred- 
stvo) — "The Sexual Problem" {O Polovom Vo- 
• prosy e)* — "The Tolstoi' Society" {O Tolstovskom 
Obshchestvye) — "The Franco-Russian Alliance" {O 
frankorusskom Soyuzye) — Letter to a Bulgarian 
Paper — ' ' Concerning Popular Newspapers ' ' {Po 
Povodu Narodnuikh Listkof) — "Religious Tolera- 
tion" {O Vyeroterpimosti). 

* Three booklets compiled by V. G. Tchertkof f rom letters, diaries, 
etc. "However carefully and with however good an intent they may 
be made, I cannot be held responsible for them." 



438 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

1902. Ill at Gaspra with angina pectoris — Jan. 29, writes 

letter to the Emperor — Recovers, writes "What is 
Religion ?" (Shto Tdkoye Religiya i f Tchom yeyd 
SushchnosV ?) — Returns to Yasnaya — August, Ginz- 
burg models bust of L. N. — Foreign Publisher offers 
1,000,000 rubles for copyright of works, refused. — 
Works at "Hadji Murat;" also on play, "The Corpse" 
(Trup); also "Father Sergyei" (Otyets Sergyi'i). — 
Reply to Swedish Society of Artists and Literarians 
— "On the Relation of "Religion to Life" (O Reli- 
gioznom Otnoshenii k Zhizni) — "To the Working 
People" (K Rabotchemu Narodu) — Letter to a 
Mahometan — Introduction to Von Polents's novel 
"The Peasant" (Der Buttnerbauer) — Letter to a 
Hindu — Nov. 14, "Appeal to the Clergy" (Obra- 
shcheniye k Dukhovyenstvu) — Elected Hon. Member 
of the Academy. 

1903. Yurief University at Dorpat confers Hon. degree — 

Letter on "Karma" — Five Letters to M. A. Novo- 
selof — Two Letters to Princess Luisa of Tuscany. — 
Letter to a person concerning Faith — "The Kishinef 
Pogrom" — "The Renovation of Hell" (Vozstano- 
vleniye Ada; a legend) — To Political Agents — "Self 
Perfection" (O Samosovershyenstvovanii) — Injured 
by horse — "The Consciousness of a Spiritual Origin; 
Power and Slavery" (O Soznanii Dukhdvnavo Nat- 
chala, Vlasti i Rabdtye: Tchertkof's Comp.) — 
Letter to M. S. D. on Physical Labor — Letter to 
Octave Mirbeau (in French). . 

1 904. Jan. Writes Preface to projected Biography of William 

Lloyd Garrison, "Garrison and Non-resistance" 
Telegram concerning the Russ.-Jap. War — "The 
Red Cross" (O Krasnom Krestye: a reply to the 
Russian women) — "Bethink Yourselves" {Odumai- 
tes: Denunciation of the War) — "The Assyrian 
Tsar, Esarhaddon" (Assiri'isky Tsar Assarkhaddon) 
— "Three Questions" (Tri Voprosa, Parables) — 
"Revolution" (O Revolyutsii: a Preface to an article 
by Tchertkof) — "Thoughts of Wise Men" (Muisli 
Mudruikh Liudyei) — "Corpse, Death and Illness" 
Trudy Smyertf i Bolyezrf: an allegory) — Two letters 



APPENDIX I 439 

on Orthodoxy (0 Pravosldvii) — Letters to Countess 
A. A. Tolstaya (collected, in Recollections of Zakhar 
Yakunin). Starts " Circle of Reading' ' (Krug 
Tcheniya). 

1905. " Everything relating to the agrarian movement, every- 

thing included in the social question, constitutes my 
occupation in Russia" — Letter to a Friend (O 
Guryskom Dvizhenii) — "The Social Movement in 
Russia" (Ob Obshchestvennom Dvizhenii f Rossii) — 
Two Letters to Japanese — "How to Free the Work- 
ing People" (Kak osvobodifsa Rabotchemu Narodu) 
— "The One Thing Necessary" (Yedinoye na Po- 
trebu) — "A Great Iniquity" (Veliky Gryekh: Land- 
owning) — "Kornei Vasilyef" (short story) — "A 
Prayer" (Molitva) — Afterword to A. Tchekof's 
story "Dushetchka" — " Strawberries' ' (Ydgodui) — 
"The End of the Age" (Konyets Vyeka}— "Recollec- 
tions of Childhood" (Vospomindniya Dyetstva) — 
"An Indispensable Revolution" (Nyeobkhodimy 
Perevordt). 

1906. September: Countess ill; relieved by operation — 

Dec. 9, death of Marya Lvovna Obolyenskaya — 
"Pascal" (Kr. Teh.) "Piotr Kheltchitsky" (Kr. Teh.) 
—"Wherefore?" (ZaShto? K. Teh.)— Lamennais" 
(Kr. Teh.)— "God's and Man's" (Bozheskoye i 
Tchelovyetcheskoye or "Divine and Human") — 
"To the People" (K Narodu) — "Military Service" 
(O Boyenno'i Sluzhbye) — "The Significance of the 
Russian Revolution" (O Znatchenii Russkoi Revolyu- 
tsii) — "Circle of Reading" (Krug Tchteniya: 
Compilation)— "It is Thou" (Eto Tui: Allegory)— 
Extracts from Diary and Letters (1885-1906) — 
Letter to a Chinaman — Letter to Paul Sabatier in 
French (On Catholicism) — "Shakespeare and the 
Drama"— "What is to be Done?" (Shto zheDyela??). 

1907. William J. Bryan visits Yasnaya — Feb. 13, Police 

seizure of Tolstoi's books. — Holds classes for village 
children — "Appeal to the Government, the Revolu- 
tionists, and the People" (Obrashcheniye k PravityeV- 
stvu, Revolyutsioneram i Narodu) — "The Only 
possible Solution of the Land Question" (Yedin- 



44© THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

stvyennoye V ozmoznoye Ryesheniye Zemelnavo Vo- 
prosa: Henry George's Single Tax) — Preface to 
Henry George's " Social Questions" — "True Free- 
dom " (Istinnaya Svoboda) — "Our Conception of 
Life" (Nashe Zhizneponimdniye) — Preface to Com- 
pilation of the Thoughts of La Bruyere, La Roche- 
foucauld et al. Short Biographical sketches (in 
Posrednik)— "Thou shalt kill No One" {Nye Ubii 
Nikovd) — " Love one another " (Liubite Drug Druga) 
— Introduction to Collection relating to E. Crosby — 
"Why Christian People in General and the Russian 
Nation especially Fall into Distress" (Potchemu 
Khristydnskiye Narodui voobshchei Russky f Osobyen- 
nosti Nakhodyatsa f Byedstvennom Polozhenii) . 

1908. "I cannot be Silent" — (Nye Mogu Moltchdf) — 

"Against the Imprisonment of Molotchnikof " (O 
Zakliutchenii f Tiurmye Molotchnikova) — ' ' The law of 
Violence and the Law of Love" (K Zakonu Nasiliya 
i Zakonu Liubvi) — "The Blessing of Love" (Blago 
Liubvi) — "The Annexation to Austria of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina" (O Prisoyedinenii Bdsnii i Hertse- 
govinui k Avstrii) — Letter to a Hindu — "The 
Teaching of Christ for Children" (Izlozheniye 
Utcheniya Khristd dlya DyeteV) — Introduction to an 
album of Orlof's Pictures. — Introduction to a story 
by V. Morozof "For One Word" (Za odno Slovo) — 
"Prayer" (Molitva in Posrednik) — Introduction to 
Novel of A. Ertel: "Gardminui"— "The Wolf" 
(Volk: a story for children) — Arrest and banishment 
of Tolstoi's Secretary N. N. Gusyef. — September 10, 
jubilee in honor of L. N.'s eightieth Birthday. — 
Holy Synod warns the Orthodox not to take part — 
"Strange to say, the longer I live, the better it is 
with me" (Letter to Nazhivin). 

1909. Banishment of Tchertkof from Tula. — Correspond- 

ence with Bernard Shaw — Attempts to give up horse- 
back riding — "Capital Punishment and Christianity" 
(Smiertnaya Kazrt i Khristyanstvo) — Letter to a 
Revolutionist — Letter to an Old Believer — "No 
Evil without Good" (Nyet Khuda bez Dobrd) — 
"Welcome to you " (Privy et Vam: To those suffering 






APPENDIX I 441 

for the Truth) — "For Every Day" (Compilation) — 
" Number of a Paper" (Nomer Gazetui) — " On Gov- 
ernment, " O Gosudarstvye (from Diary) — On Gogol 
— "The Truth" (OPravdye)— "Education" (O Vos- 
pitanii)—" On Guideposts" (O Vyekhakh)— "The 
Visit of Henry George's Son" (article in Russkoye 
Slovo) — "Childish Wisdom" (Dyetskaya MudrosV) 
— "On Science" (O N auk ye) — Statement regarding 
the arrest of Gusyef. — "The Inevitable Revolution" 
(Nyeizbyezhny Perevorot) — "The Only Command- 
ment" (Yedinaya Zdpovyed') — Address to (Stock- 
holm) Peace Congress — To a Polish Woman — " Con- 
versation with a Passer-by" (Razgovor Prokhozhim) 
— "Songs in the Village" (Pyesni na Deryevnye) — 
"It is Time to Understand": (Pora Ponydt\ Article 
on Vituperative Letters) — "Hanging" (O Vyeshanii) 
— "Traveler and Peasant" (Proyezhy i Krestyanin) 
— Reply to articles by Struve — Letter to the English 
Henry George League — Letter to a Priest — "Educa- 
tion" (O Vospitanii: No. 2) — "Have Faith in Your- 
selves" (VyertyeSebye). "Permit me to live out my 
life in those religious convictions into which I have 
come — I trust that I am not mistaken — with a true 
desire to fulfil the will of Him who gave me my life 
(Letter to a Priest) . 
1 9 1 o. " Three D ays in a Village ' ' ( Tri Dnyd f Deryevnye) — 
"From her All Qualities" (Otneya Vsye Kdtchestva) 
— Supplement to Address to Peace Congress — "In- 
sanity" (O Bezumii: unfinished) — "Suicides" (O 
Samoubi'istvakh: unfinished) — Preface to the book 
"The Way of Life"— "Socialism" (O Sotsyalizmye) 
—"The Death Penalty" (O Smyertnoi Kazni).—"! 
am not in prison; unfortunately, but my prison, 
though without bolts, sometimes, in moments of 
weakness, seems to me worse than yours. It is pain- 
ful to you but to me it is wholly shameful" (Letter 
to Molotchnikof ) . Nov. 10, early in the morning, 
L. N. leaves Yasnaya; goes on horseback to Shchyo- 
kino (8 versts) — to Gorbatchovo by rail, 55 versts — 
to Kozelsk by goods-train in coach filled with work- 
men and badly ventilated, 105 versts — to Optin 



442 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Pustuin and the Sharmandsky Monastery, on horse- 
back, 1 8 versts; from there to Kozelsk, on horse- 
back, 1 8 versts; to Dvorki by rail, thence to Volovo, 
196 versts; starts for Rostof-on-the-Don but is 
obliged to stop at Astapovo Nov. 14 — 11 versts, 325; 
while suffering from illness. — Nov. 20, the Count- 
ess joines the other members of the family at the 
little red izbd. — L. N. T. passes away at 6.05 in the 
morning. — Nov. 23, buried at Yasnaya without 
religious ceremonies. — Posthumously published : 
"Tolstoi Almanac:" Letters of L. N. Tolstoi 
selected and edited by P. A. Syergyeenko. (Pisma 
L. N. Tolstovo 1 848-1 9 10, sobrdnnuiya i redakti- 
rovannuiya P. A. Syergyeenko.) 

Note: In the bibliography no guarantee can be made as to exact 
accuracy in noting the year of publication. Owing to the strictness of 
the Russian censorship many of Tolstoi's books were issued in Switzer- 
land and other countries. His repudiation of copyright also made for 
uncertainty. The bibliography contained in the second volume of Aylmer 
Maude's "Life" differs frequently by a year or more from that com- 
piled by Biryuk6f. How wide the variation is may be seen from the fact 
that Maude dates "The Demands of Law" 1893; Biryukof gives it 1899; 
and the Bibliography compiled by V. N. in Riisskoye Slovo sets it as 1897. 



APPENDIX II 

TOLSTOIAN COLONIES 

A book might be written concerning cooperative and social- 
istic communities, beginning with the experiments of the early 
Christians and continuing down through the ages, including 
such modifications as Brook Farm, the Shaker settlements in 
Massachusetts, the various attempts made in California and 
Kansas, the Dukhobors in the Caucasus and in Canada (their 
first leader is said to have been Lukeria, an illegitimate 
daughter of the Emperor Alexander I.) and finally the several 
colonies founded by enthusiastic disciples of Tolstoi. In all 
cases human nature has at last asserted its supremacy and 
individualism begun to disintegrate the principle of mutuality. 
A scientific Socialism controlling all natural monopolies, even 
the land, but still encouraging individual effort and confirming 
family occupation of homes and estates, levying a rental 
instead of taxes, will be the only kind of Socialism that can ever 
prevail unless by a substitution of a popular tyranny for the 
capitalistic tyranny that now prevails. 

The Tolstoi'an communities are based not only on the prin- 
ciple that the holding of all property by individuals is wrong 
but also on the principle that all violence, even self-defense, is 
contrary to Christ's teaching. Such colonies were founded in 
Holland, in England, and in America as well as in Russia. 
They all speedily fell to pieces. 

At Smolensk, a boy adopted into the Community took a 
waistcoat belonging to the man who had charge of him. The 
boy, basing his argument on the general principle of the sect, 
claimed that it was as much his as any one's. The colonists 
took sides and the dispute ended with the usual result. 

Another colony at Tver was established on poor land but 
controlled eighty acres of forest. The colonists cut off some 
timber to build a house for a man who proposed to join them. 
He changed his mind and peasants from a neighboring village 

443 



444 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

offered to ouy the lumber. The colonists decided that as 
they themselves no longer needed the lumber it ethically 
belonged to those that did, for instance to the peasants who 
wanted it sufficiently to buy it. They said to the peasants: 
"God and not we created the trees, and therefore, as you 
need the lumber more than we do, it is yours. " 

The peasants then proceeded to remove not only the trees 
that had been felled but also to cut off the whole forest. 
Some came with one sledge; some with five or more and those 
that took advantage of this unexpected windfall got into a 
fight over the most desirable trees. The doctrine of non- 
resistance prevented the colonists from using force to restore 
order but they appointed an outside muzhik as forester with 
instructions to let only a few men in at a time. This thrifty 
man collected fees from those who applied to him. Great 
dissatisfaction resulted. Crowds of peasants came to get 
passes and when they were refused became indignant. Even 
more angry were those who having got some had not got more. 
Others blamed the colonists for not having divided the wood 
among the poorest peasants; as it was, the rich ones, who had 
several horses, carried off most of the timber. Excellent in 
theory, the doctrine of communism always fails in practice. 

There was an agricultural colony formed by members of the 
Intelligentsia at Poltava, but there again the men, though 
educated, could not agree. 

A still more striking example of the impracticability of the 
idea of non-resistance was afforded by an Intelligentsia Colony 
in the Province of Kharkof. The land and house had been 
bought for the Disciples by a man named Alyokhin, who held 
the thoroughly Tolstoian belief that no one had any right to 
own property, to defend it by force, or to go to law about it. 
A crank named Klobsky, calling himself "The Teacher of 
Life,'' appeared one day and having obtained a clear idea of 
this doctrine announced to the colonists the next morning at 
breakfast that their farm-house and all its appurtenances — 
the garden, the fields, the outbuildings — belonged to him. 
Proclaiming himself master, he ordered them to vacate. He 
was good enough to give them three days to make their 
arrangements. 

The colonists were true to their colors and departed; but 
Alyokhin called the peasants of the neighboring village to- 



APPENDIX II 445 

gether and presented the farm to them, not very consistently 
signing the legal deeds requisite and necessary. Klobsky, 
outwitted, vanished and the peasants took possession. 

When Tolstoi was informed of this he expressed his opinion 
that it was the proper solution. He was glad that the peas- 
ants had the land and he advised the "intelligents" to settle 
down with them and work for them. It does not require a 
microscope to detect the flaw in Alyokhin's logic. 

At Purleigh, in England, Tolstoian ideas were put into 
practice, but five or six of its chief members were so insane as 
to require medical treatment and the others were involved in 
such violent quarrels that it went to pieces. 

It must be borne in mind that Tolstoi* himself did not take 
much stock in such concerted movements. He did not object 
to the agricultural colonies, but material things concerned him 
very little. He was more interested in spiritual matters. He 
often remarked that it was important to maintain pleasant 
relations with those about one and if that involved, as it did 
in his own case, remaining in the conditions of one's former 
well-to-do life, it was better to sacrifice one's spiritual peace 
than to cause anger and bitterness in one's family. 

In reply to this, his extreme disciples cited the text "A 
man's foes shall be they of his own household." These men 
strove to realize Tolstoi's teachings in their own lives but were 
prone to reaction, while those who sympathized with his 
religio-philosophical opinions, understanding him better and 
having really more respect for him, cherished their new views 
as well as they could without making their former homes im- 
possible and contented themselves with merely refusing to 
serve in the army. (See Tolstoian doctor cited in Maude, 
Vol. II., p. 345-) 

.Tolstoi himself said in a letter written in 1891 to V. V. 
Rakhmanof : " Christ's teaching consists in the establishment 
of the ideal of God's kingdom, for the attainment of which it is 
necessary to be perfect like the Father; that is, the ideal of 
perfection is internal and external. The Commandments, 
the five commandments, are only indications, on that endless 
path of the place below which, at the present period in the 
life of humanity, we ought to attain. 

' ' Perfection consists : 1 . In regarding all — the Zulu, the idiot, 
the criminal, the wild beast as equals, as brothers, and loving 



446 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

them as you love your dearest. The milestone is the Com- 
mandment that one cannot and should not be angry with 
his brother. 2. In being perfectly pure. The Command- 
ment is, Thou shalt not commit adultery. 3. In being 
perfectly free, not being bound in any way. The Command- 
ment is, Not to take oaths. 4. Never to use violence either to 
defend others or yourself against any living thing. The 
Commandment is, Not to destroy evil by violence. 5. Not 
to have enemies. The Commandment is, Do good to your 
enemies. " And after glorying in the fact that he no longer 
held the views expressed in "What do I Believe?", that he 
had outgrown them, he says: 

"Christianity is great in the very fact that it was not in- 
vented by Christ but is an eternal law which humanity obeyed 
long, long before this law was formulated, which it always 
will obey and which it obeys now in the person of those 
who neither know nor wish to know Christianity. The dif- 
ference consists only in this, that for those that know the idea 
of Christianity life is full of stimulus and joy. 

" The Christian life consists not in obeying Commandments 
nor even in following its teaching but in the movement toward 
perfection, toward a cleaner and clearer understanding of 
this perfection and an ever nearer approach to it. The 
strength of the Christian life consists not in any definite degree 
of perfection (all degrees are equal because the road is endless) 
but in the acceleration of the movement; the swifter the 
movement, the more powerful the life. This idea of life 
gives especial delight, when it is shared with all men though 
they stand on the most varied degrees and not dividing them 
as the evil-doer does. The murderer on the Cross and 
Zaccheus live more Christian lives than the Apostles. " 

Tolstoi has often been called a crank, but he was a crank 
that turned the right way. 



APPENDIX III 

TOLSTOI IN THE EYES OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES 

Aylmer Maude, who of Englishmen was nearest to Tolstoi, 
sums up his estimate of him as follows: — 

"It is Tolstoi's life that attracts, more than the doctrines 
that are peculiarly his own. Especially his old age is a proof 
that the pursuit of the great things he has cared for, yields 
more permanent stimulation, interest and enjoyment than the 
pursuit either of pleasure or of gain — for few indeed are the 
men of his age who are as ardently alive as he or who feel so 
little regret for what the years have filched from them. 

"It was his passionate ardor that gave driving force to his 
message, causing his words to change the lives of many men, 
and making his influence — as it truly is — quite incalculable. 
. . . There are few great men whose lives it w T ould be pos- 
sible to lay bare before the public, with such full assurance 
that by perfect frankness one will not diminish the respect 
and affection in which they are held by mankind. 

" Without Tolstoi's self-reliance, and readiness to challenge 
things that have grown up through ages and are deep-rooted 
in men's affections, he never could have accomplished what he 
has done in revaluing all values, putting down the mighty 
from their seats and exalting the humble and meek. That 
his qualities run to excess, and cause him to condemn occu- 
pations, pursuits, and men he knows little about, may 
be true; as also that there is in him a spirit of contradiction, a 
suspiciousness of men's motives, and a vigor of invective, that 
contrast strangely with the humility and meekness he so 
sedulously cultivates, and the warm-hearted affection that was 
his from the first. But these things are spots on the sun. 
His genius, sincerity, industry, courage, endurance, and tena- 
city; his marvelous intuition, extraordinary capacity for 
observation and artistic reproduction; his devotion to the 
service of truth and goodness; his self-abnegation, his concen- 

447 



448 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

tration upon the most vital branches of human thought, and 
his unparalleled capacity for making his meaning plain and his 
feeling attractive, mark him as by far the greatest and most 
interesting man alive." (Maude, "The Life of Tolstoi, Vol. 
II., page 669.) 

V. M. Lopatin, who took the part of the third peasant in 
"The Power of Darkness/' had a high admiration for him: 

"I was convinced of the ardor of Tolstoi's desire to find the 
truth of life, to obtain it from any source, and to induce men 
to follow the only path that leads to the accomplishment of 
man's true destiny. The simplicity of his relation toward 
the thoughts and feelings of every man, his interest in what 
each one thought and knew; his keen regret at the discrepancy 
between his view of life and the inclinations of those about 
him, and the pure, almost childish joy with which he glowed 
at any indication that his spiritual world was understood by 
some one else, convinced me of the profound sincerity which 
has made the great artist a great Christian teacher." 

Gilbert Chesterton begins his article on Tolstoi with his 
usual paradox: — 

"If any one wishes to form the fullest estimate of the great 
man, he will not find it in his novels, splendid as they are, or in 
his ethical views, clearly as they are conceived and expanded. 
He will find it best in the news that has recently come from 
Canada that a sect of Russian Christian anarchists has turned 
all its animals loose on the ground that is immoral to possess 
them or control them. 

" Tolstoi," he goes on to say, "with his immense genius, with 
his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge 
of life, is deficient in one faculty alone. He is not a mystic and 
therefore he has a tendency to go mad. ... In the main 
and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. 
The thing that has driven them mad was logic. " 

Emile Fagiiet of the Academie Francaise mingles criticism 
with encomium: — 

"Tolstoi is one of the tenor twelve greatest names of Euro- 
pean literature of the nineteenth century. Posterity will place 
him a little below Goethe, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Byron, 
Tennyson, Dickens, Balzac; on a level with Schiller, George 
Sand, Musset, Vigny, Thackeray. He will remain one of the 



APPENDIX III 449 

great lights of artist-humanity and even of philosophic 
humanity. He was, though a degree inferior, very closely, but 
very closely as a replica (to a certain extent concordant), the 
Jean- Jacques Rousseau* of Russia. 

"Like Jean- Jacques Rousseau, he began with novels; like 
Jean- Jacques Rousseau, he went off into sociological and 
moralistic works; like Jean- Jacques Rousseau, he denied his 
works of fiction in his sociological and moralistic works; like 
Jean- Jacques Rousseau, he wrote his memoirs, with this differ- 
ence, that he began with them instead of ending with them; 
like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he attempted (both of them 
vainly) to conform his private conduct to his written doctrines 
and maxims; like Jean- Jacques Rousseau, he was regarded 
as a prophet and as a saint by some superior minds and by a 
great number of imbeciles, the first establishing his celebrity, 
the others his glory. . . . 

"This great man w T ill be challenged as a philosopher, even 
as a moralist; he will not be challenged as a great soul or as a 
great artist. He possessed that duplex imagination which 
vivifies characters wdth universal life (qui fait vivre les per- 
sonnages d'une vie de tons les instants) and which makes crowds 
live and powerfully agitates them before our eyes and makes 
collective beings of them, having a soul the irradiation of 
which we perceive from the outside. 

"He had, finally, his dream of human regeneration, far 
from original doubtless, but drawn from sacred and eternally 
gushing springs; he had his deeply respectable dream from 
which we must never turn away our eyes except to see not 
only how distant it is but also how one may travel toward it 
and then once more look at it. 

"And thus he who has passed on is a grand example of 
humanity; he is a lofty lighthouse of the earth whose light has 
gone out." 

Anatole France of the Academie Francaise has only praise, 
in somewhat banal and inadequate but still genuine estimate: 

"We may salute in Tolstoi the most august and the loftiest 
thought that to-day rises above our humanity. 

* Fagiiet's comparison of Tolstoi to Rousseau was brought to my at- 
tention after I had independently made a somewhat similar one in the 
text of the volume. It still seems unquestionable that Tolstoi stands on 
a moral level far higher than Rousseau. 



45© THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

"As an epic novel-writer Tolstoi is the master of all of us 
by his observation of human beings as well in the exterior 
signs by which they betray their nature as in what they conceal ; 
he is our master by reason of the abundance and the force 
of the creations which animate his work; he is our 
master by his infallible selection of the circumstances which 
can communicate to the reader the feeling of life in its infinite 
complexity. These marks of his genius are found again and 
again in the works throughout the whole period of his activity. 

"Again Tolstoi is an inimitable example of intellectual 
nobility, courage and generosity. With a heroic tranquillity, 
a terrible gentleness, he has denounced the crimes of a society 
which asks of the laws only confirmation of its injustices and 
its violences. In this he is good among the best. 

"Even though we, less saintly, might not find as he did, in 
simplicity of soul and in resignation a panacea against all the 
ills of existence, whenever we go to teach some idea of justice 
to the rough industrial cities of our age of steel, we shall carry 
in our hearts the image of the great evangelical and patri- 
archal Pan of Ydsnaya Polyana, that new demigod of the 
fields and the woods. 

"What ancient Greece conceived and realized by the ri- 
valry of cities and the harmonious flights of ages — a Homer, 
Nature has produced for Russia in creating Tolstoi — Tolstoi, 
the soul and the voice of an immense people, the river from 
which children, men and the shepherds of men will drink in all 
times to come." 

Maurice Maeterlinck says:— 

"Tolstoi is the greatest artist of our present civilization. 
No one, I opine, will exercise a deeper and more real moral 
influence. By moral influence we must understand not so 
much the evident action of morals, the sentiments and the 
thoughts of men as that somewhat obscure power which goes 
further than thought, touches with a penetrating and diffusive 
fashion the mysterious central point of each life, introduces 
into the atmosphere of spirit and feeling, in regions where it 
is as yet unrecognized but still very active, a new element 
which escapes all analysis and gradually modifies the chem- 
ical formula of the atmosphere which our thought, or rather 
the mystic mother of all our thoughts, will breathe to-morrow. 



APPENDIX III 451 

II Certain artists have this gift. In others who are great in 
another way no trace of this is found, as for example in Zola, 
who never had this influence of which I speak. Tolstoi's 
after having been at first rather dubious, then charitable and 
humane but limited by a sort of puerile and sickly Christianism, 
seems to have purified itself day by day and in its last mani- 
festations admirably blends with the highest ideal which the 
provisory thoughts of the men of our time can conceive. " 

The novelist Paul Margudritte acknowledged Tolstoi as 
his spiritual master: — 

" Tolstoi at the present time represents the highest con- 
science of humanity. During his life and now that he is dead 
his radiance is clear and brilliant and will long continue to 
shine like those lingering twilights which, after the sun has 
set, seem like the brightness of another and unknown world. 

II I know that I should strive less, that I should cherish less 
love for the light of goodness, truth and justice, if Tolstoi had 
not filled my mind with his thought during a period of years. 

- "His influence on my people has been just as significant as 
it has been on me. To recognize this, to proclaim it aloud, 
must be the very modest tribute which I can lay at the feet 
of this rough genius, this anchorite, this great shepherd of 
human souls, this novelist of genius, this new Christ of a 
religion of goodness and love, in whom the noblest and holiest 
thought attained those heights up to which the mass of men 
gaze with vague unrest and reverent emotion. 

" His thought is like the great light of Sinai shining through 
the darkness of our corrupt civilized world.' ' 

D. N. Ovsyannikof-Kulikovsky, in his book analyzing 
Tolstoi's services as a national novelist and as a thinker, says: 

"Endowed with the unique gift of creative genius, a con- 
summate realist, and a profound psychologist, Tolstoi created 
immortal gems of art which from century to century will 
serve mankind as the inexhaustible fount of knowledge of the 
human soul. 

"He did not present broad artistic types comprehending a 
great number of varied phenomena, but those comparatively 
narrow class and national types that we find in his productions 
are expounded and elaborated in a way in which not another of 
the greatest artists has had the power to do. In this respect, 



452 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

Tolstoi gave what no one else ever gave. His creative power 
is to the highest degree intensive; it reveals to us the deepest 
and most secret matrices of the human mind. 

"The aim of Art is to recognize everything that is human, 
and there are two tracks leading to this: i. the way of a 
broader artistic synthesis, and 2. the way of more or less pro- 
found artistic-psychological analysis. Every true artist goes 
on either the one or the other of these tracks, but only rarely 
is breadth of generalization united with profound analysis. 
This was the case with Shakespeare, who is therefore hailed 
by us as the very Tsar of poets. 

" In Tolstoi analysis evidently prevails over synthesis. But 
the depth and perfection of his analysis abundantly com- 
pensates for the lack of breadth in his generalizations. 

"Now if you take the human soul in its natural appearance 
without any artistic generalizations and submit it to such an 
analysis as we find in Tolstoi', the result will have an undoubted 
universal significance. In fact the artistic synthesis is a great 
work, but the human soul above all demands analysis. In 
this respect remember Goethe's lines: 

"Greift nur hinein iris voile Menschenleben! Ein Jeder lebt's 
— nicht vielen ist's bekannt, Und wo iWs packt — da ist's 
interessant!* 

"No one ever had such skill to catch the life (that is to 
say, the soul) of man as Tolstoi had, provided that life 
was known to him, if it was accessible to his artistic compre- 
hension. And all that he grasped was humanly interesting, 
beginning with the childhood recollections of Irtenyef and 
ending with the drama of Anna Karenina. And all this makes 
deposits of enormous value both in psychology and in ethics 
and in that highest order of Art which of necessity does not 
divert, does not drive away thought, but on the contrary leads 
it to new and occasionally far from happy ideas and 
dominates work and intellect and feeling and conscience." 

W. D. Howells {North American Review, Dec, 1908), 
on the occasion of Tolstoi's eightieth birthday wrote: — 

"The century in which Tolstoi mostly lived and mostly 
wrought had among its many great names few more memor- 

* Grasp into the full life of men. Each one lives it; unknown it is to 
most, and when it takes hold of you, then it becomes interesting. 



APPENDIX III 453 

able than his, if it had any. There was Napoleon and there 
was Lincoln, and then there was Tolstoi in an order which 
time may change, though it appears to me certain that time 
will not change the number of these supreme names. . . . 

" I do not think that in fiction he has any peer or even any 
rival, because from the beginning he 'took truth for his sole 
hero/ and would have no other in any extremity or for any 
end. But even with his devotion to reality in the study of life, 
which, so far as I can note, was absolute, the prime affair was to 
captivate the reader, to lead his fancy, not to convince and per- 
suade his reason. . . . But when once the call of Religion 
came to Tolstoi, it came so powerfully, so loudly, that it must 
shut from his senses every voice that called before; there he 
stood; so help him God, he could no other than obey it, and 
it alone, testifying for it with all his heart and all his soul and 
all his mind. The moral spectacle is of unsurpassed sub- 
limity and no riches of fiction is conceivable, fiction even from 
him, the supreme master, which would console our poverty if 
we had failed of such books as 'My Confession/ 'My Re- 
ligion/ 'The Kingdom of God/ 'What is Art?' 'What is 
Religion?' 'Life/ 'What is to be Done?' and many of the 
briefer essays and occasional appeals to the world in signal 
events and emergencies against its blindness and cruelty and 
folly. . . . Before he came to his awakening Tolstoi had done 
enough for fiction and the art of it, for he had done incom- 
parably more for it than any other master of it. . . . No 
doubt Tolstoi was qualified and fortified for his ethical work 
by his esthetic achievement. But he descended to the labor of 
teaching from such heights of art in fiction as no man had 
reached before — from 'War and Peace/ from 'Anna 
Karenina/ he humbled his art to such prentice work as those 
little fables and allegories and sketches adapted to the un- 
derstanding of peasants and peasants' children, as he humbled 
his life to the level of theirs. . . . The event was a com- 
promise, or it was a defeat, if you choose to think it so; but it 
was no more a compromise or a defeat than that of any other 
human career. Compared with the event of any other career 
in this time, the career of the greatest warrior, statesman, 
king, priest, or poet, it is a flawless triumph." 

Theodore Roosevelt (in the Outlook, March, 1909) said: — 



454 THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI 

" Count Tolstoi is a man of genius, a great novelist. l War 
and Peace/ 'Anna Karenina/ 'The Cossacks/ ' Sevas- 
topol/ are great books. As a novelist he has added mate- 
rially to the sum of the production of his generation. As 
a professional philosopher and moralist I doubt if his in- 
fluence has been very extensive among men of action." 

Mathew Arnold's estimate (published in the Fortnightly 
in 1887):— 

"Whatever else we have or have not in Count Tolstoi, we 
have at least a great soul and a great writer. . . . Count 
Tolstoi sees rightly that whatever the propertied and satisfied 
classes may think, the world, ever since Jesus Christ came, is 
judged; 'A New Earth' is in prospect. ... I arrive at 
the conclusion that Count Tolstoi' has perhaps not done well 
in abandoning the work of the poet and artist, and that he 
might with advantage return to it. But whatever he may do 
in the future, the work which he has already done, and his 
work in religious as well as his work in imaginative literature, 
is more than sufficient to signalize him as one of the most 
marked, interesting, and sympathy-inspiring men of our time 
— an honor, I must add, to Russia, although he forbids us to 
heed nationality/' 

W. T. Stead: "In Russia and out of Russia, I have found 
people more interested in the personality of Count Leo 
Tolstoi, the novelist, than in that of any other living Russian. 
He is the first man of letters in contemporary Russia, but that 
alone would not account for the widespread interest in his 
character. He is a great original, an independent thinker, a 
religious teacher, and the founder of something that is mid- 
way between a church, a school, and a socio-political organi- 
zation. He not only thinks strange things and says them 
with rugged force and vivid utterance — he does strange 
things, and, what is more, he induces others to do the same. 
A man of genius who spends his time in planting potatoes 
and cobbling shoes, a great literary artist who has founded a 
propaganda of Christian anarchy, an aristocrat who spends 
his life as a peasant — such a man in any country would com- 
mand attention. In Russia he monopolizes it." 



INDEX 



A-B-C-book, the New, 328-229. 

Addams, Jane, visit of, to Yasnaya 
Poly ana, 360-361. 

Agnosticism, discussion over the ad- 
vantages of, 280. 

Akim, cesspool-cleaner, character of, 
316. 

Aksakof, S. T., 124, 268. 

"Albert," short story, 36, 116. 

Alcott, Amos Bronson, similarities 
between educational theories of, and 
those of Tolstoi, 174. 

Aleksei, Tsesarevitch, 2. 

Aleksei, Tolstoi's body-servant. See 
Arbuzof. 

Aleksei dungeons, Tolstoi's attempted 
visit to, 252. 

Alekseyef, Lieutenant-Colonel, 42-43, 
49-So. 

Alekseyef, Vasily Ivanovitch, socialist 
and infidel, 259, 262-263. 

Alexander I., Emperor, 7. 

Alexander II., Emperor, appreciation 
of Tolstoi's Sevastopol Sketches by, 
82; mentioned, 93; emancipation of 
the serfs by, 155; Tolstoi's com- 
plaint to, of police search of Yas- 
naya Polyana, 185-186; assassina- 
tion of (March 13, 1881), 273. 

Alexander III., Emperor, Tolstoi's 
letter to, 274-276; "The Fruits of 
Enlightenment" given before, 328; 
protection of Tolstoi by, against 
hostile forces, 342; death of, 352. 

Alexei Mikhailovitch, Emperor, 1. 

Alphabet of sounds, first devised by 
Dekabrists, 252. 

Ambrosy, Father Superior of the 
Optin Monastery, 253, 280, 335. 

America, "The Kreutzer Sonata" in, 
331; Gorky's experiences in, and 
Tolstoi's indignation over, 332. 

American writers, Tolstoi's judgments 
concerning various, 345. 

Amiel's "Journal," preface to, by 
Tolstoi, 349. 

Anarchy, peaceful, 156; scientific, 207. 

Anathema issued by Holy Synod 
against Tolstoi, 368-369. 

Animals, theory of non-destruction of, 
336. 

Ankovsky-pie, 320. 



"Anna Kardnina," mentioned, 8, 100, 
190. 193; circumstances under which 
started, 239; Turgenief's unfavor- 
able opinion of, 240; completion of, 
243; prototypes of characters in, 
245; position of the work in the 
world's literature, 246; judgment of, 
according to Tolstoi's theory of Art, 
246-247. 

Ant-brethren, the, 12-14, 52. 

Antiquity, impressions of, 152. 

Anutchin, D., 336 n., 348. 

Apollof, progressive and unfrocked 
priest, 349. 

Arabic, Tolstoi as a student of, 25. 

Arbiter of Peace, appointment of 
Tolstoi as, 155; activities as, 169- 
17 1 ; removal from position, 171. 

Arboriculture, Tolstoi's system of, at 
Samara, 223. 

Arbuzof, Aleksei, Tolstoi's body- 
servant, 24, 82, 182, 207; quoted on 
Tolstoi's change in attitude toward 
the Church, 241; experiences with 
Tolstoi during visit to Optin Monas- 
tery, 278-279; cited, 307-308. 

"Archbishop and the Thief, The," 
story, 254. 

Archiv, monthly typewritten maga- 
zine published by Tolstoi and his 
friends, 357. 

Arm-breaking experience, 200-201. 

Army life, in the Caucasus, 42-43, 56— 
72; in the Crimean War, 74 ff.; at 
Sevastopol, 79-92. 

Arnold, Matthew, poetry of, not 
appreciated by Tolstoi, 358; esti- 
mate of Tolstoi by, quoted, 454. 

Art, Tolstoi's address on pure literary, 
134-135; Tolstoi on the develop- 
ment of feeling for, in the young, 
179; realization of importance of, to 
the masses, 179; "War and Peace" 
and "Anna Karenina" judged by 
Tolstoi's theory of, 246-247; unique 
discussion of, in "What is Art?" 
362-365. 

Artels (trades unions), Tolstoi's views 
of, 144-145- 

Astapovo, Tolstoi's last hours passed 
at, 403-404. 

Athletics, 123, 129, 149, 208. 



455 



456 



INDEX 



Auerbach, Berthold, tales by, read by 
Tolstoi, 138; Tolstoi's visit to, in 
Dresden, 142; Tolstoi's second visit 
to, and description of, 158. 

Authors' and Students' Aid Society, 
the, 114. 

Azbuka, compilation of the, 228-229. 



Bacon, Francis, read by Tolstoi, 144. 

Baedeker, international evangelist, 
260. 

Balaklava, battle of, 79. 

Ballou, Rev. Adin, Tolstoi's admira- 
tion of, 345. 

Baryatinsky, Prince, 48, 50. 

Bast shoes, University in, 238. 

Bataille, Henri, opinion of Tolstoi of, 
420. 

Battles, descriptions of, 218, 220. 

Bear, narrow escape from a, 132-134. 

Beethoven, Russian folk-songs and 
melodies favorably contrasted with 
music of, 179; Tolstoi's views of, 
249, 250-251. 

" Beginning of the End, The," article, 
357. 

Behrs, Dr. Andrey, 10 1, 188, 191. 

Behrs, Islenyeva, 23, 101. 

Behrs, Sony a Andrey evna. Set Tol- 
staya, S. A. 

Behrs, Sonya, 191, 192. 

Behrs, Stepan A., brother-in-law ot 
Tolstoi, 201, 203-204; quoted on 
Tolstoi's characteristics, 208, 209, 
211, 212; visits Samara with Tolstoi 
in 187 1, 224-227; cited regarding 
Tolstoi's change of personality, 
318-321; coolness between Tolstoi 
and, 321. 

Behrs, Tanya (Tatyana), 191, 202. 

Berlin, Tolstoi's visit to, 141; second 
visit to and inspection of schools in, 
158. 

Bernhardt, Sarah, 289, 290. 

Besh-tau, visit to the springs at, 61-63. 

Beyle, Marie-Henri, Tolstoi's indebt- 
edness to, 87. 

Bible teaching, Tolstoi on, 177, 178; 
the "Wicked Bible," 265. 

Bicycle- riding, Tolstoi's skill in, 350. 

Biryukof, Piotr Ivanovitch, banish- 
ment of, 355; letter written to, in 
1902, 382. 

" Black Fowl," Pogarefsky's, 23. 

Black Hundred poetry inspired by 
Tolstoi's death, 412. 

Blake, William, quoted, 14. 

" Blizzard, The" (" The Snowstorm") , 
72, 101. 

Boboruikin, 296. 

Boer War, letter on the, 367. 

Bondaryof, exiled peasant author, 

„ 305-306. 

Borisof, I. P., 123. 

Borodino, visit to battle-field of, 203- 
204; mistakes of Tolstoi concerning, 
222. 



Botkin, V. P., 118, 124; on Tolstoi's 

" eccentricities," 138; on the quarrel 

between Tolstoi and Turgenief , 164- 

165. 
Bourget, Paul, 364. 
" Boyhood," 58, 82, no. 
Braddon, M. E., novels of, impress 

Tolstoi favorably, 212. 
Brussels, Tolstoi's visit to, 155-156. 
Bryan, W. J., visit of, to Yasnaya 

Poly ana, 390. 
Bukharest, life at, during the Crimean 

War, 74-75, 76 ff. 
Bulka, bulldog, 40, 49, 228. 
Bull, incident of the keeper killed by 

a, 186-187. 
Butlerof, Professor, spiritualist, 326. 
Buzuluk Monastery, visit to, 254. 



Capital punishment, Tolstoi's views 
on, 116-117, 206. 

Card-playing, 34, 37, 40, 51, 81, 87, 95, 
114, 127, 384. 

Carmen Sylva, high opinion held by, 
of "What Men Live By," 281. 

Cattle-breeding, 222. 

Caucasus, conditions in the, 40; Tol- 
stoi's departure for the, 40-41; 
description of first view of the 
mountains, 43-45; Tolstoi not af- 
fected by poetic and romantic 
aspects of, 72. 

Censor, experiences with the, 66, 68, 
82-83, 299, 304-305, 316, 363, 387; 
"My Confession" prohibited by, 
262; Tolstoi expresses his feeling 
about, 345-346; passages from 
stories mutilated by, to be published 
in their original form, 415. 

Census, Tolstoi's newspaper article on 
the, in Moscow, 288. 

Census-taker, Tolstoi as a, in Moscow, 
287-289. 

Chesterton, Gilbert, quoted on Tolstoi, 
448. 

"Childhood," mentioned, 10; quoted, 
15, 18, 21] the writing of, 48-49. 

Chinese billiards, Tolstoi's losses at, 
187. 

"Christ and the Woman taken in 
Adultery," Polyenof's painting, 325. 

" Christ before Pilate," Gay's painting, 

333-334. 

Christianity, Auerbach s definition of, 
158. 

"Christian Teaching, The," treatise 
for benefit of Dukhobors, 356. 

Church, Tolstoi's attitude toward, in 
1867, 240; confusion of false and 
true in teachings of, 261-262 ; analy- 
sis and confutation of dogmas of the, 
270—272; repudiation of, by Tol- 
stoi, 330; Tolstoi proclaimed Anti- 
Christ by, 341; excommunication 
of Tolstoi by the, 368-369; attitude 
of, after death of Tolstoi, 407-409. 

"Circle of Reading," periodical, 387. 



INDEX 



457 



"Circular to the Clergy," published 
in 1903. 384. 

Clar^tie, Jules, opinion of Tolstoi of, 
420. 

Cobbling, lessons in, 298; Tolstoi's 
pride in, 337. 

Commandments, Five, 271. 

Composition, literary, 156, 178. 

"Confession." See "My Confession.'* 

Consumption, Tolstoi's fear of, 140. 

"Conversation among Leisurely Peo- 
ple," 344. 

"Corpse, The," play, 384. 

Cossacks, description of, in the Cau- 
casus, 44-45. 

"Cossacks, The," mentioned, 31, 57- 
59, 65, 138; quoted, 43~45; story of 
publication of, 187-188; quality of, 
as a work, 188-189; Turgenief's 
translation of, into French, 258. 

Courage, secret of, 309. 

Crimea, winter of 190 1 spent in, 380- 
383. 

Crimean War, 73-92. 

"Critique of Dogmatic Theology," 
Tolstoi's, 264-265, 270. 

Crosby, Ernest H., influence of 
Tolstoi felt by, 317. 

"Crucifixion," Gay's painting, 349. 

"Culture's Holiday," pamphlet, 324. 



"Daily Telegraph" famine article, 
342. 

Danilyevsky, G. P., quoted, 98; Tol- 
stoi's remarks to, on physical labor, 
310- 

Danubian principalities, troubles in 
the (1876-77), 243. 

Danubian provinces, evacuation of, 
by Russia, 76. 

Daudet, little cared for by Tolstoi, 
345- 

David and Goliath, Tolstoi on, 167- 
168. 

"David Copperfield," 33, 71. 

Davuidof, Judge N. V., 384. 

"Dead Souls," Gogol's, 120, 215, 418. 

Death, thoughts on, 118, 134, 146- 
147, 151-152, 230, 236, 243, 258, 
260, 268, 380. 

" Death of Ivan Ilyitch," the writing 
of (1886) , 309. 

Debts, 35, 40, 52, 77, 81. 

Dekabrists, the, 11 3- 114, 199; pro- 
posed novel on, 251; sound alphabet 
of prisoners' invented by, 252; 
reminiscences of the, 252; aban- 
donment of plan for novel based on, 
and reasons, 252-253. 

De Kock, Paul, praised by Tolstoi, 
152-153. 

Delano, Mrs. Aline, translation of 
"Kingdom of God" and "War and 
Peace" by, 347 n. 

Dentists, Tolstoi's views of, 153. 

Deroulede, visit to Tolstoi from, 312- 
313. 



Diary, rules of behavior entered by 
Tolstoi in, 30-31; causes of his 
failures entered in, 36; other entries 
in, 37, 45, 59, 65, 147; read aloud by 
police commissioner who raided 
Yasnaya Polyana, 185; discontin- 
uance of, in 1865, 201; renewed in 
1878, 264; Tolstoi's request for 
destruction of, after his death, 416. 

Dickens, Charles, Tolstoi's opinion of, 
33; Paul de Kock the French, ac- 
cording to Tolstoi, 153. 

Diesterweg, Tolstoi's meeting with 
son of Friedrich, at Berlin, 158-159. 

Disciples, 306, 343. 

Division of property, Tolstoi's, 336- 

_ 337- . . 

Divorce, opinions of, 246. 

Doctors, 212. 

"Dog, The," Turgenief's poem in 
prose, 268. 

Dole, Charles F., definition of religion 
by, 3Si. 

Dolgoruky, Prince, Tolstoi and, 312. 

" Don Quixote," Tolstoi and, 365. 

Dostoyevsky, F. M., "Childhood" 
meets with appreciation by, 67; 
advised by Turgenief not to meet 
Tolstoi, 268. 

Dragomirof , General, " Soldier's 
Notes" by, 381. 

Drama, essay on Shakespeare and 
the, 358. 

Dresden, Tolstoi's visit to, 142. 

Droysen, J. G., Tolstoi attends lec- 
tures by, 141. 

Drozhzhin, E. N., schoolmaster, 349. 

Druzhinin, translator of Shakespeare, 
108; criticism of Tolstoi's "Youth" 
by, no— in ; pedestrian tour with, 
118; mentioned, 130, 131; on 
Tolstoi's proposed abandonment of 
literary work, 139. 

Du Bois-Reymond, Tolstoi attends 
lectures by, 141. 

Duels, Tolstoi on the fighting of, 165- 
168. 

Dukhobors, mentioned, 319; Tolstoi's 
defense of and activities in behalf 
of, 353-356; emigration of, to 
Manitoba, 365; profits from "Resur- 
rection" devoted to assistance of, 
366. 

Dumas, Alexandre, Tolstoi's opinion 
of, 153. 



Education, Tolstoi's activities in, at 
Yasnaya Polyana, 1 74-181; Tol- 
stoi's theories not applied to his 
own children, 210; Tolstoi's discus- 
sion of, with educators at Moscow 
(1874), 237; failure of Tolstoi's 
plan for a normal school forYasnaya 
Polyana pupils, 238; Tolstoi's loss 
of interest in, and reasons, 318. 

"Education of the People," paper on, 
237-238. 



458 



INDEX 



" Egyptian Nights," Pushkin's method 
of starting a work shown in, 239. 

Emancipation of the serfs, 130-13 1, 
155- Tolstoi's opinion on the effect 
of the, 173- 

Enissienne, Mile., 6. 

Epishka, Cossack visitor at Yasnaya 
Poly ana, 283. 

"Ethics of Diet," introduction to, 
by Tolstoi, 344. 

Excommunication of Tolstoi, 368- 
369; Countess Tolstaya's letter 
concerning, 369-370; Tolstoi's digni- 
fied attitude, 371-3 73- 

Executions, Tolstoi and Thackeray 
on, 116-117. 

44 Exposition of the Teaching of Jesu3 
for Children," 387. 



Faguet, Emile, criticism of Tolstoi by, 
448-449- 

"Family Happiness," mentioned, 77; 
writing of (1859), 134. 

Famine, of 1873 in the Samara region, 
232-233; relief work by the Tol- 
stoi's in 1890-92, 340; dangers to 
Tolstoi resulting from activities 
during the, 342-343. 

Fasting, Tolstoi's abandonment of, 
266. 

"Father Sergyei," posthumous novel, 
253. 

Feinermann, young Jew, 274, 305; 
experiences of, at Yasnaya Polyana, 

Fiction, Russian, 128. 

Figner, N. N., signs for Tolstoi, 339. 

Firdausi, nickname of Count Nikolai 
Tolstoi, 130, 140. 

"First Distiller, The," drama, 314. 

"First Step, The," introduction to 
"Ethics of Diet," 344. 

Flaubert, G., quoted on "War and 
Peace," 222; Tolstoi's enjoyment 
of, 345- 

Flesh-eating, Tolstoi's forswearing of, 
306. 

Flogging of peasants, article "Shame!" 
a protest against, 353. 

Flowers, as Tolstoi's one dissipation, 
319. 

Folk-songs, Tolstoi on the beauties of, 
179; Tchaikovsky's comments on 
those sent him by Tolstoi, 249-250; 
collections of, by various hands, 
250. 

Force, folly of, 181. See Non-resist- 
ance. 

"Four Gospels Harmonized and Tran- 
slated," 264-265; considered by Tol- 
stoi the most important of his 
writings, 272. 

France, Turgenief's efforts to popu- 
larize Tolstoi in, 240, 258. 

France, Anatole, on Tolstoi's perma- 
nent literary position, 419, 449— 
450. 



French writers, Tolstoi's judgments 
of, 345- 

Friends of Russian Literature, Society 
of, 134. 

"Fruits of Enlightenment," comedy, 
326;performance of, in Petersburg, 
345; production of, as a memorial to 
Tolstoi forbidden by Government, 
414. 

Funeral of Tolstoi, 407-411. 

Fy£t (Afanasy A. Shenshin), first 
meeting of, with Tolstoi, 95-97; 
mentioned, 123, 124, 131, 132, 136, 
146, 160, 164, 188, 196, 242-243, 
25s, 256, 258; visit of, to Yasnaya 
Polyana in 1858, 127; Tolstoi's 
letter to, 129-130; quarrel between 
Tolstoi and Turgenief at home of, 
161-165; change in Tolstoi's rela- 
tions toward, 349. 

Fy6dorof, N.F., Moscow librarian, 286^ 
287. 



Galitsuin, Prince, 4, 365. 

Galitsuina, Princess, 145. 

Gambling experiences, 34~35, 37, 39. 
40, 52-53, 70, 81, 89; loss of $750 at 
Chinese billiards and resulting sale 
of "The Cossacks," 187-188. 

Games in the steppe, 234. 

Garrett, Constance, translates " King- 
dom of God is within You," 347 n. 

Garshin, mentioned, 96. 

Gaspra, winter spent by Tolstoi at, 
380-383. 

Gay (Ge), Nikolai N., friendship 
between Tolstoi and, 291; portrait 
of Tolstoi by, 299; at Yasnaya 
Polyana and Moscow, 307, 311; 
sketches made by, illustrating 
Tolstoi's short stories and the life of 
Jesus, 311; paintings by, compared 
with Polyenof's, 325; bust of Tolstoi 
by, 333; "Christ before Pilate" by, 
333-334; death of (1894), 394- 

Geneva, Tolstoi's visit to, in 1857, 
118-120. 

Geography, Tolstoi on the teaching of, 
177, 178. 

George, Henry, praised by Tolstoi, 
345, 348. 

Gerasimovna, Mary a, nun, 9. 

German writers, little mention of, in 
Tolstoi's writings, 345. 

Germany, Tolstoi's visits to, 141-145, 
156-159. 

Gnyeditch, Greek translator, 224. 

God, Tolstoi's seeking after and crea- 
tion of a, 260-261. 

" God sees the Truth," publication of, 
229; origins of, 314. 

Goethe, influence of, on Tolstoi, 112, 
212 ; effects of travel on Tolstoi and, 
contrasted, 152. 

Gogol, N. V., Tolstoi's opinion of 
stories by, 33; the "Dead Souls" 
of, mentioned, 120, 418; comparison 



INDEX 



459 



ofTurgenief and, 137; description 

by, of nights on the Dniepr, 233; 

influence of, over modern masters 

of Russian fiction, 418. 
Golden Rule, stress laid on, by 

Tolstoi, 271. 
Goldenweiser, pianist, plays for Tol- 
stoi, 381. 
Goodness, basis of, 273. 
Gorky, Maxim, treatment of, in 

America, 332; visits Tolstoi in the 

Crimea, 381. 
Gortchakof, Prince S. D., 71, 74-75, 

78. 
"Gospel in Brief," discussion over, 

with the monk and scholar Leonty ef , 

335-336. 
"Gospels, How to Read the,' pam- 
phlet, 357. 
"Graf Nulin," poem by Pushkin, 10, 

11 n. 
Gratsyensky, Father, priest of Asta- 

povo, 407. 
Greek, study of, by Tolstoi, 223-224. 
Greeks, Tolstoi's criticism of art of, 

364. 
Grigorovitch, Dmitry V. , reminiscences 

of Tolstoi by, 94-95, 128. 
Grisha, character of, in "Childhood," 

15, 16. 
Gromeka, S. S., publicist, 132. 
Guillotine, Tolstoi a witness of an 

execution by the, 116-117. 
Gusef, N. N., Tolstoi's secretary, 

arrest of, 397. 
Gymnastics, Tolstoi's fondness for, 

123-124, 149, 208. 
Gypsies, 35, 41, 127, 128. 



Hadji Murat, Tchetchen chief, 225. 
" Hadji-Murat," unfinished story, 381, 

415- 

Hall, Bolton, paraphrase of "Life "by, 
317. 

Hauptmann, Gerard, rank given Tol- 
stoi by, 420. 

Hebrew, Tolstoi's study of, 296. 

"Help!" by Biryukof, Tchertkof, and 
Tregubof, 355. 

"Hermann and Dorothea," Tolstoi af- 
fected by, 112. 

Herodotus, reading of, by Tolstoi, 223, 
227. 

Herzen, Aleksandr I., Tolstoi on, 98; 
Tolstoi's meeting with, in London, 
I53-I54. 

History, Tolstois views on, 28; on the 
teaching of, 177. 

Holland, Tolstoian colony founded in, 

m 357- 

Homer, influence of, on Tolstoi, 112, 
122, 177, 224. 

Horses, purchase of, by Tolstoi, 223, 
248. 

Hot springs of Goryatchev6dsk, 46-47. 

Howells, W. D., quoted on Tolstoi, 
452-453. 



" How I learned to Ride Horseback," 
story, 18. 

" How the Little Devil earned a 
Crust of Bread," story, 314. 

Hugo, Victor, effect of " Notre Dame" 
by, on Tolstoi, 112; works of, im- 
press Tolstoi, 212, 344. 

Hunting, 123, 131, 132, 202, 203, 226, 
267, 307, 313. 

Hyeres, the Tolstois at, 145; death of 
Nikolai Tolstoi at, 146; Tolstoi's 
prolonged stay at, 149-152. 



Immortality, 272. 

" Industry and Idleness," preface 

written for Bondaryof'sbook, 305. 
" Infected Family, The," comedy, 198. 
Inkerman, battle of , 79. 
Insane asylum, visits to an, 392-396. 
"Invaders, The," 57, 67. 
Islenyef, A. ML, 10, 23, 36, 37. 
Italy, Tolstoi's journey in, 152. 
Ivan, Father, insinuates that Tolstoi is 

insane, 360; prays for Tolstoi's 

death, 388. 



Jackson, H. H., mentioned, 347. 
Jesus, 264, 266, 270, 273, 276, 302, 

305, 311. 320, 329, 333, 369, 372, 

387. 
Journalists, 212. 
Juryman, Tolstoi's refusal to serve as, 

298. 



Kansas, socialist colony in, mentioned, 
259, 43o. 

Kant, read by Tolstoi, 212, 345. 

Karamzin, 128. 

Kashkin, Nikolai, 290. 

Katharine the Great, Empress, 20, 
28, 78, 238. 

Katharine II., 216, 271. 

Katkof, Mikhail N., 93; editor of 
Vyedomosti, 124; Ydsnaya Polyana 
magazine published by, 183; pub- 
lishes "War and Peace" serially, 
201 ; disagreement between Tolstoi 
and, over "Anna Kar£nina," 244. 

Kazan, early life at, 24-25. 

Keller, German mathematician and 
teacher, 158. 

Kennan, George, visits Tolstoi, 324; 
discussion of theory of non-resist- 
ance with, 336 n.; description of 
Tolstoi cited, 337. 

Kenworthy, John Coleman, Tolstoi's 
definition of religion in letter to, 
422 n. 

Khilkof, Prince, radical thinker, 319; 
the American and the letters to, 
360-361. 

" Kholstomyer," story, 195 n. 

Khomyakof, A. S., dramatist and 
theologian, 134-135. 

Kief, Tolstoi's pilgrimage to, 265. 



460 



INDEX 



Kiesewetter, in "Resurrection," the 
prototype of, 260. 

"Kingdom of God is within You," 
338; declined by publishers in 
United States, 347 n.; publication 
of, 347- , . . 

Kissinger, Tolstoi s visit to, 142-145. 

Kdlokol, Herzen's journal, 153. 

Kolokoltsof, Grisha, 205, 206. 

Konstantinof, General, 103. 

Korenitsky, Captain, 103. 

Korolenko, Vladimir, description by, 
of the mourning for Tolstoi, 410- 
412. 

KovaleVskaya, Sophia, 339. 

Kralik, Dr., opinion of Tolstoi ex- 
pressed by, 420. 

Kramskoi, artist, 209; Tolstoi sits to, 

235. 

Krauskopf, Rabbi Joseph, description 
of Tolstoi by, 33 7~338. 

" Kreutzer Sonata," mentioned, 193; 
reading aloud of, and ensuing 
discussion, 329; views expressed in, 
329-330; sensation created by, 330— 

33i- 

Kruizhanovsky, Commandant of Ar- 
tillery, 89, 92. 

Kugushef, Prince, public reading of 
"War and Peace" by, 215. 

Kumys-drinking at Samara, 182-183, 
224—227, 282—283. 

Kuzminsky, I., at Tolstoi's funeral, 
409. 

" Kuzmitch's Diary," unfinished man- 
uscript, 415. 



Lazarevsky, member of maritime 

court-martial, 385. 
Leipzig, Tolstoi's visit to, 142. 
Leontief, Professor, Tolstoi tested in 

Greek by, 224. 
Leontyef, K. N., author, scholar, and 

monk, 335. 
L£rmontof, M. Y., poet, 72. 
Levin, character of, 56, 193, 245. 
"Letter to the Liberals," 357. 
" Letter to the Minister of the Interior 

and of Justice," 357. 
Levin, the character of, in "Anna 

Karenina," 56, 193, 243, 245. 
"Life," treatise on, 316-317; Bolton 

Hall's paraphrase of, 317. 
Literary composition, study of, at 

Yasnaya Poly ana School, 178-179. 
Literary Fund, the, 114. 
Literature for the masses, 304-306. 
"Lives of the Saints," Rostovsky's, 6. 
London, Tolstoi's visit to, 153-155. 
Lopatin, V. M., 327; impersonation 

of Tolstoi by, 350; quoted on 

Tolstoi, 448. 
Love affairs, Tolstoi's, 101-108, 191- 

195- 
Lovers of Russian Literature, pro- 
jected reading by Tolstoi before the, 

on Turgenief, 298. 



Lucerne, Tolstoi's visit to, 120-122. 

"Lucerne," story entitled, 1 21-122. 
" Lucrece," Pushkin's opinion of, 11 n. 
Lukyanof, S. M., Ober-Prokurdr of 

Holy Synod, 407-408. 
Luther, Martin, Tolstoi's interest in, 

144; comparison of Tolstoi to, 440. 
Luxury, dislike of, 208. 
Lvof, aristocratic Moscow spiritualist, 

326. 



Maeterlinck, Maurice, quoted on Tol- 
stoi, 450-451. 

Makovitsky, D. P., friend and physi- 
cian of Tolstoi's, 400. 

Malakhof, capture of the, 88. 

Manitoba, settlement of Dukhobors 
in, 356, 365. 

Manual labor theory and practice, 
296-299, 301, 306-309. 

Marcus Aurelius, quoted, 15. 

Margueritte, Paul, quoted on Tolstoi, 
45i. 

Markof, description of police raid on 
Yasnaya Polyana by, 184. 

Marriage, essential elements of, 37; 
Tolstoi's courtship and, 191-197; 
views on, in "What do I Believe?" 
and "The Kreutzer Sonata," 330. 

Marseilles, Tolstoi visits schools at, 
150-151. 

"Master and Man," writing of, 353. 

Maude, Aylmer, quoted on Tolstoi's 
educational work at Yasnaya 
Polyana, 176; estimate of Tolstoi by, 
447-448. 

Maupassant, Guy de, story by, trans- 
lated by Tolstoi, 334; Tolstoi's opin- 
ion of, 344-345. 

Menschikof, Aleksandr, 2. 

Menshikof, Prince, 78. 

Mikhailovsky, Nikolai K., critic, 
meeting with Tolstoi, 291-292. 

Mikhailovsky-Danielefsky, as a his- 
torian, 219. 

Military Sketches, the, 81-86. 

Milton, Tolstoi's dog, 49, 228. 

Mirbeau, Octave, admired by Tolstoi, 
345; on Tolstoi's rank in universal 
literature, 420. 

Moabit Prison, Tolstoi's visit to, 141. 

Modeling in clay by Tolstoi, 205. 

Moliere, Tolstoi's liking for comedies 
of, 212. 

Molokans, religious sect, 227, 282. 

Monasteries, Tolstoi's visits to, 253, 
254, 265, 278, 335. 

Monastery fortress at Suzdal, 342. 

Morozof , Vaska, Moscow cabman, 308. 

Mortier, 124. 

Moscow, Tolstoi's residence in, as a 
young man, 36-37; Tolstoi's resi- 
dence in, after first trip abroad, 
123-125; removal to, for education 
of children, 284; unhappiness of 
Tolstoi over conditions in, 286; 
Tolstoi as a census- taker in, 287- 



INDEX 



461 



289; house bought by Tolstoi in, 
295; prohibition of public reading 
by Tolstoi in, 298; disposition of 
house in, in division of Tolstoi's 
property, 337; Tolstoi's reception 
at congress of Russian Naturalists 
in, 349-350; overwhelming ovation 
to Tolstoi in, after excommunica- 
tion, 374-3 76. 

Moscow Conservatory, inception of, 
in the Moscow Musical Society, 125. 

Mountains, description of, quoted, 
43-45- 

Murat, Tolstoi's treatment of, in 
"War and Peace," 221. 

Music, early study of, under Rudolf, 
German musician, 35; evenings of, 
during early residence in Moscow, 
123-125; folk songs and melodies 
compared with Beethoven, 179; 
Tolstoi and, 249 ff. 

Muzhiks, debt of, to Russian writers, 
128; emancipation of the, 130-13 1, 
155; Tolstoi's efforts in behalf of, 
as Peace Arbiter, 1 69-1 71; mourn- 
ing of, for Tolstoi, 404. 410-41 1. 

"My Confession," quoted, 22, 27, 93, 
242; mentioned, 114, 117, 154, 254, 
260; a possible fictional element in, 
25S; publication of, forbidden by 
censor, 262, 295. 

Names, Russian, 216. 

" Napoleon," poem by Pushkin, 10, 23. 

Napoleon I., 216, 219, 265; Tolstoi's 

treatment of, in "War and Peace," 

221. 
Napoleon III., 74. 
Naturalists, Tolstoi at congress of 

Russian, 349~35o. 
Nature, Tolstoi's love of, 207, 264, 

293- 
Nazaryef, student at Kazan, 28, 29. 
Nekhlyudof, Prince, 31, 32, 121, 336. 
Nekrasof, N. A., editor of Sovremen- 

nik, 64, 65, 82; poem "Russian 

Women" by, 199. 
" Nest of Noblemen," Turgenief's. 137. 
" New Life," Auerbach's novel, 142. 
Newspapers, Tolstoi and, 212. 
Nicholas I., Emperor, 7, 73, 82. 
Nicholas II., Emperor, accession of, 

352. 
Nietzsche, Tolstoi charmed by, 365. 
"Night in Sevastopol," 82. 
"Nihilist, The," farcical comedy, 198. 
Nikanor, Archbishop, denunciation of 

Tolstoi by, 330. 
Nikolskoye estate, 163. 
Nirvana, 230, 231, 243. 
Nizhni Novgorod, 24. 
Nobel Prize, refused by Tolstoi, 398. 
" Non- Acting," essay, 349. 
Non-resistance, Tolstoi's theory of, 

3 29 1 33 6 ". doctrine elucidated in" The 

Slavery of Our Time," 367-368; 

proof of impracticability of, 444, 

445- 



Novosyolof, M. A., 305. 

Oberlander, Fraulein, pianist, 253. 

Obolyensky, Prince, 184-185, 223, 
254, 409. 

Ogaryof, Nikolai P., collaborator of 
Herzen's on the Kdlokol, 154. 

Old Believers, 265, 342. 

"Only Means, The," article dealing 
with labor problem, 379. 

"On the Eve," Turgenief's, 137. 

"On the Heights," Auerbach's, 142. 

Optin Monastery, visits to, 253, 278- 

_ 280, 335. 

Optin Pustuin Hermitage, visit to, 
402. 

Oriental languages, Tolstoi's study of, 
as a young man, 25. 

Orlof, teacher in railway school, 287. 

Ostashkof, hunter, 132-133. 

Osten-Saken, Countess Aleksandra, 
20, 21, 24. 

Ostrovsky, A. N., "The Thunder 
Storm" by, 137. 

" Oty£ts Serrgyei," unpublished manu- 
script, 415. 

Ovations to Tolstoi after excommuni- 
cation, 3 74-3 76. 

Ovsyanniko-K u 1 i k o v s k y, D. N., 
quoted on Tolstoi, 451-452. 

Ozolin, I. I., station-master at Asta- 
povo, 403. 

Palmerston, Lord, 74; in the House of 
Commons, 155. 

Pamphlet against Tolstoi promulgated 
by the Church, 360. 

Panayef, 83, 97, 108. 

Panslavism, 124, 135, 136, 259. 

Parables, 353. 

'Parasha," poem by Turg£nief, 136. 

Parfeny, Bishop of Tula, 407, 408. 

Paris, Tolstoi's visit to, in 1857, 116- 
117; second visit to (1861), 152-153. 

"Patriotism and Christianity," treat- 
ise, 350. 

"Patriotism and Peace," essay, 357. 

Peace Arbiter, appointment and ser- 
vice of Tolstoi as, 155, 1 69-1 71. 

Peace Conference, Hague, attacked by 
Tolstoi, 367, 397-398. 

Peasants, indebtedness of, to Russian 
novelists and poets, 128-129; eman- 
cipation of the, 130— 131, 155; inter- 
est in German, roused by Auerbach's 
tales, 142; Tolstoi's activities in aid 
of, as Peace Arbiter, 169-17 1. See 
also Muzhiks. 

Penza, proposed purchase of an estate 
in, 222. 

Perfection, five Rules for, 336. 

Perovskaya, Sophia, conspirator, 274. 

Persky, S., reminiscence of Tolstoi by, 
362. 

Pessimism, 260. 

"Peter Parley" as a model in history 
teaching, 177. 



462 



INDEX 



Petersburg, Tolstoi's candidacy for the 
University at, and life in, 34-35; 
Tolstoi's life in, at close of Crimean 
War, 93-101; performance of 
"Fruits of Enlightenment" in, 345; 

gerformance of "The Power of 
>arkness " in , 3 5 6 ; museum founded 
at, in honor of Tolstoi's eightieth 
birthday, 390. 

Peter the Great, Tsar, 1-2; failure of 
proposed novel by Tolstoi dealing 
with, 231; Schuyler's standard ac- 
count of, 231-232. 

Petropavlovsk, visit to fortress of, 
252. 

Philanthropy, Tolstoi's views on, 385. 

Pisemsky, 128. 

Plagiarisms, Tolstoi's, 254. 

Plaksin, Sergyei, on Tolstoi and the 
children at Hyeres, 149. 

Play- writing, 315. 

Pobyedonostsef , Prokuror of the Holy 
Synod, 275-276; prohibits pub- 
lication of "What do I Believe?" 
299; activities of, against Tolstoi, 
342; indictment of, in "Resurrec- 
tion," 366; Jesuitical plan of, incase 
of Tolstoi's death, 383. 

Poems in prose, Tolstoi's and Tur- 
genief's, 267-268. 

Poetry, Tolstoi's remarks concerning, 
357-358. 

Pokrovskoye, estate of the Behrs', 191. 

" Polikushka," the writing of, in 
Brussels, 156; mentioned, 195. 

Polonsky, meeting with Tolstoi at 
Spasskoye, 281. 

Polyenof, painting of "Woman taken 
in Adultery" by, 324. 

Positivism, 351. 

Posrednik, publishing enterprise found- 
ed by Tolstoi and others, 304-305. 

"Post-box" magazine, 294. 

"Power of Darkness, The," play, 315, 
316; performance of, in Petersburg, 
356. 

Pozdnyakof, poet, Tolstoi's discour- 
aging advice to, 3 57~3 58. 

Prayer, 45, 53, 71, 88, 138. 

Prescott, W. H., Tolstoi's opinion of, 
33- 

Printing, of little use to the people, 
according to Tolstoi, 172-173. 

"Prisoner of the Caucasus," men- 
tioned, 69; publication of, 229. 

"Progress and Poverty," impression 
of, on Tolstoi, 348. 

Property, division of Tolstoi's, 336- 
337- 

Proprietor's Morning, A," quoted, 
31-32; appearance of, and Turge- 
nief's criticism, 113. 

Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, Tolstoi's 
meeting with, 155-156. 

Psychological Society, Moscow, 316. 

Pushkin, Aleksandr Serg6yevitch, 
poet, 10— ii, 23, 72, 128; Tolstoi's 
attention attracted to beauties of 



works of, 179; projected history of 
Peter the Great's reign by, 231; 
characteristic method of starting a 
work, 239; Tolstoi's refusal to join 
in ovation to memory of, 267-268: 
argument between Tolstoi and 
Turg£nief over, 268; influence of, 
shown in modern Russian writers, 
418. 

Pushkin, curator of University of 
Kazan, 25. 

Pushkin, President of Committee of 
Censors, 83. 

" Quail, The," Turg^nief s story, 281. 
Quarrel with Turgenief, 1 61-165. 
Question-box scheme at the Work- 
man's Union, 141. 

"Raid, The" ("The Invaders"), 67. 

Railway, Tolstoi's dislike for travel 
by, 212. 

Rakhmanof, V. V., 336. 

Rayevsky, famine relief worker, 340. 

Reading, art of, 178; Tolstoi reads 
paper on, before Moscow educators, 
237. 

Reading-books compiled by Tolstoi, 
228-229. 

Reason, Law of, 265, 351. 

"Reason and Religion," essay, 350- 
35i- 

"Recollections," Tolstoi's, quoted, 9, 
10— ii, 12, 14. 

Religion, definition of, by Tolstoi, 351, 
422 n. 

"Religion and Morality," essay, 351. 

"Religious Toleration," article, 381. 

Renan, Tolstoi's opinion of "Life of 
Jesus" by, 264. 

"Resurrection," mentioned, 189, 190; 
Baedeker, international preacher, 
the prototype of Kiesewetter in, 
260; beginning of work on, 357, 
publication of, to aid Dukhobors 
to emigrate, 366; description of; 
366. 

Revolution, the spirit of, throughout 
Russia in 1877, 259. 

Riding, first lesson in, 18. 

Riehl, W. H., works of, 145. 

"Romanism in Russia," by D. A. 
Tolstoi, 3. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, Outlook article 
on Tolstoi by, quoted, 453-454. 

Rossel.Feodorlvanuitch.tutor, 15, 18. 

Rostopchin and the burning of Mos- 
cow, 220. 

Rostovsky, Dmitry, work by, cited, 6. 

Rousseau, J. J., influence of, on Tol- 
stoi, 33, 59; comparison of Tolstoi 
and, 421, 449. 

Rubinstein, Anton, 125; story of con- 
cert by, and Tolstoi's complimen- 
tary ticket, 311. 

Rubinstein, Nikolai, director of Mos- 
cow Conservatory, 125, 249; Tol- 



INDEX 



463 



stoi's acquaintance with and fond- 
ness for music of, 254. 

Rudolf, German musician, 35-36, 116. 

Rules for Perfection, 336. 

Rules of conduct, 30-31. 

Rumyantsof Museum, study of docu- 
ments at, 204. 

Ruskin, John, comparison of Tolstoi 
and, 155. 

M Russian Women," poem by Nekra- 
sof, 199. 

Russky Vyestnik, serial publication of 
"War and Peace" in, 201; appear- 
ance of "Anna Karenina" in, 239- 
240; withdrawal of conclusion of 
"Anna Karenina" from, 244. 

Russo-Japanese War, looked on with 
horror by Tolstoi, 386. 

Ryepin, painter, 209; Tolstoi sits to, 
333; painting by, "Tolstoi Plowing," 
344; portrait of Tolstoi by, ordered 
removed from Petersburg gallery, 
37i. 



Sado, Tchetchen friend of Tolstoi's, 
52-54, 68-69. 

St. George's Cross, 56, 86. 

Saints, religious pilgrims called, 15. 

St. Thomas, Prosper, tutor, 19. 

Saltuikof, Mikhail Y., editor, 124, 291. 

Samara, first visit to (1862), 182-183; 
second visit to (1864), 200; visit to, 
in 1871, 224-227; visit to, in 1872, 
and purchase of land at, 232; famine 
in region of, 232-233; continued 
visits of the Tolstois to, and descrip- 
tion of life at, 233-235, 257, 282- 
283. 

Samarin, P. F., Marshal of Nobility 
for Tula, 187, 326. 

Sand, George, Tolstoi's aversion to, 
94, 212. 

Sandusky "Times" article on Tolstoi, 
324. 

Schelholm, Minna, kindergarten man- 
ager, 156. 

Schools, visits to German, 1 41-14 2; 
to French, 1 50-151; at Weimar, 
156-158. 

Schools for peasants, 37, 137, 142, 
174 175, 180, 182, 184, 187, 209. 

Schopenhauer, Tolstoi's admiration of, 
222, 260. 

Schroder, Leopold von, opinion of 
Tolstoi of, 420. 

Schumann, Tolstoi's views of, 249, 
250-251. 

Schuyler, Eugene, meeting of, with 
Tolstoi in Paris (1861), 152; cited 
on Tolstoi's opinion on effect of 
emancipation of serfs, 173; men- 
tioned, 176; quoted concerning 
Tolstoi's remarks on " War and 
Peace," 215-221; assists Tolstoi in 
obtaining American primers and 
readers, 228; history of Peter the 
Great by, 231-232. 



Scott, Sir Walter, method of, con- 
trasted with Tolstoi's in " War and 
Peace," 221; Tolstoi's opinion of, 
345- 

Semyonof, S., description of Tolstoi 
by, 348-349. 

" Senilia," Turgenief's, 268. 

"Sentimental Journey," Sterne's, 33, 
40, 112. 

Sermon on the Mount censored by 
Russian officials, 305. 

Seuron, Anna, cited, 306, 319. 

Sevastopol, siege of, 78 ff.; revisited by 
Tolstoi in 1885, 304. 

"Sevastopol in August," 88. 

"Sevastopol in December," 82. 

Sevastopol Sketches, the, 82-86; pub- 
lished in he Temps, 258. 

Sevastopol Song, the, 89-90, 103. 

Sex problem in books, 329-330, 344- 
345- 

Shakespeare, Pushkin's opinion of 
"Lucrece," n n.; Tolstoi's dislike 
and lack of appreciation of, 358— 
359- 

Shakhovskoi, Prince, 352. 

"Shame!" article against practice of 
flogging peasants, 353. 

Shamordin, convent of, 9, 335; Tol- 
stoi's stop at, during last wander- 
ings, 402. 

Shamyl, Sufi Mollah, Tartar leader, 
40, 67. 

Shaw, Bernard, correspondence be- 
tween Tolstoi and, 398. 

Shenshin, A. A. See Fy£t. 

"She was Crafty" ("Fruits of En- 
lightenment"), comedy, 326. 

Shibunin, soldier executed for striking 
his captain, 205-207. 

Shoe-making, 297, 301, 324. 

Silistria, siege of, 76. 

Silver wedding, the Tolstois', 320. 

Simferopol, Tolstoi at, in Crimean 
War, 79, 81. 

Skobelyef, General, Tolstoi's refusal to 
receive, 267. 

"Slavery of our Time, The," treatise, 
367-368. 

Slavonic question, 244. 

"Smoke," Turgenief's, 213. 

Smye's, publication to aid famine 
sufferers, 348. 

Solitary confinement, Tolstoi's views 
on, 141. 

Sovremennik, publication of "Child- 
hood" in, 64-67; appearance of the 
Sevastopol Sketches in, 82; sup- 
pression of, for too liberal tenden- 
cies, 238. 

Spasskoye, Turgenief's estate, 66, 80. 

Spiritualism, 272, 326. 

Spring, effect of, 126. 

Stakhovitch, M. A., visitor at Yas- 
naya Poly ana, 313. 

Starogladovsk, Tolstoi's life at, 56 ff.; 
memories of Tolstoi preserved in, 
72-73. 



464 



INDEX 



Stary Yurt, life at, 42-43; gambling 
incident at, 51-54. 

Stasulyevitch, Ensign, 205, 206. 

Stead, W. T., quoted on Tolstoi, 454. 

Stein, Ludwig, opinion of Tolstoi, 420. 

Steiner, Edward A., quoted on Tol- 
stoi and Ruskin, 155. 

Steppe, life in the, 233-235. See 
Samara. 

Sterne, Laurence, Tolstoi's opinion of, 
33. 112. 

Stevenson, R. L., reference to, 147. 

Stoetrer, Julius, visit of Tolstoi to 
school of, 156-158. 

Stoluipin, commander of Cossacks at 
Uralsk, 183. 

Stoluipin, Prime Minister, 408. 

"Stories of My Dogs," 40, 228-229. 

Strakhof, N., literary assistant and 
critic of Tolstoi's, 229, 253, 269. 

Students, suppression of manifesta- 
tions by (1900, 1901), 368; Tolstoi 
takes part in protests against treat- 
ment of, 376-377. 

Suicide, thoughts on, 147, 246, 393; 
Tolstoi's temptation to commit, 
after completing " Anna Karenina," 
254-255, 261. 

Sulphur springs of Besh-tau, 61-63. 

Sutayef, sectarian Christian peasant, 
285, 290. 

Suzdal, monastery fortress at, 342. 

Switzerland, Tolstoi in (1857), 118- 
122. 

Synod, Holy, 360, 367, 368, 374, 383, 
389, 407-409. 



Talmud, reading of, by Tolstoi, 296. 

Tartar tribes in the Caucasus, 40; 
experiences in warfare with, 67-69, 

Tchaikovsky, Piotr Ilyitch, composer. 
249; folk-songs sent to, by Tolstoi, 
249-250; disappointed in Tolstoi, 
250; quoted, 251—252. 

Tchekof, Anton, receives advice from 
Tolstoi, 358; visits Tolstoi, 381. 

Tchertkof,V., banishment of, 355, 392; 
at Tolstoi's funeral, 409. 

Tchirkof, Dr., 315. 

Tchitcherin, V. N., 124. 

Tchornaya River, battle of, 87. 

" Telegraph" (London) famine article, 

™ 342. 

Temeshova, Dunetchka, 9. 

Temperance movement at Yasnaya 
Polyana, 3 2 2—3 23 . 

Text-books, preparation of a series by 
Tolstoi, 228-229. 

Thackeray, W. M., on executions, 117. 

Theological studies, Tolstoi's, 270 ff. 

Thiers, Tolstoi on, as a historian, 219. 

Thoreau, H. D., reminders of, in Tol- 
stoi, 264; a Russian peasant co- 
thinker with, 305. 

"Three Days in a Village," 398-399. 

"Three Deaths," story, 126; criticism 



of, 135. 
Three Hermits, The," 254. 



"Three Parables," folk-tales, 353. 

"Thunder Storm," Ostrovsky's, 137. 

Tirlis, Tolstoi's life at, as a candidate 
for the army, 48-50. 

Title, pride in, 97; dropping of, 296. 

Tobacco, giving up of, by Tolstoi, 307; 
remarks on effects of, 327. 

Todleben, General, 79. 

"Tokology," Dr. Stockham's, preface 
to, by Tolstoi, 344. 

Tolstaya, Aleksandra, youngest daugh- 
ter of L. N. Tolstoi, 300; joins 
Tolstoi in his last wanderings, 403; 
in the funeral train, 409; Tolstoi's 
unpublished Mss. left to, 415. 

Tolstaya, Aleksandra A., relative of 
L. N. Tolstoi, 119, 126, 136, 145, 
232; interviews Alexander III. in 
behalf of Tolstoi, 342. 

Tolstaya, Princess Mariya Volkons- 
kaya, mother of L. N. Tolstoi, 4, 
5-7, 10. 

Tolstaya, Marya, second daughter of 
L. N. Tolstoi, 209, 326, 333, 387. 

Tolstaya, Marya N., sister of L. N. 
Tolstoi, 9, 39, 63, 66, 81, 105, 122, 
123, 335, 402. 

Tolstaya, Sophia Andreyevna (S. A. 
Behrs), wife of L. N. Tolstoi, 191, 
192-194; marriage of, 195; Fy£t's 
description of, 196; activities of, as 
housekeeper, private secretary, and 
manager, 198; called the "prime 
minister" by Tolstoi, 209; opposi- 
tion of, to Tolstoi's educational 
activities, 238-239; inability of, to 
understand Tolstoi's behavior, 266- 
267; argument of, that the Chris- 
tian teaching is not practicable, 
276-277; description of, during 
residence in Moscow, 287; letter to 
the count from, 292; undertakes 
publication of Tolstoi's books, 302; 
complains to her brother, of her 
cares, 319-320; an illustration of 
difficulties of being consort of a 
genius, 320, 338; interview with 
Alexander III. over " The Kreutzer 
Sonata," 330-331 ; letter written by, 
in reply to public anathema issued 
by Holy Synod against Tolstoi, 3 69- 
370; description of, at Tolstoi's 
death-bed, 403-404, 406; at Tolstoi's 
funeral, 409. 

Tolstaya, Tatyana N., eldest daughter 
of L. N. Tolstoi, 201, 326, 327, 340, 
387, 407. 

Tolstaya, Varvara, infant daughter of 
L. N. Tolstoi, 237. 

Tolstoi, Aleksei, son of L. N. Tolstoi, 
287; death of, 311. 

Tolstoi, Aleksei Konstantinovitch, 
poet, ancestor of L. N. Tolstoi, 3. 

Tolstoi, Dmitry Andreyevitch, states- 
man and author, 3 . 

Tolstoi, Dmitry (Mitenka), brother 
of L. N. Tolstoi, 8, 23, 25, 29, 39; 
career, illness, and death of, 99—101. 

Tolstoi, Feodor Petrovitch, artist, 3. 



INDEX 



465 



Tolstoi, Ilya A., grandfather of L. N. 
Tolstoi, 3,5- 

Tolstoi, Ilya N., second son of L. N. 
Tolstoi, 205, 404. 

Tolstoi, Ivan, youngest son of L. N. 
Tolstoi, 337; death of, 352. 

Tolstoi, Ivan Petrovitch, 2. 

Tolstoi, Lyof L., third son of L. N. 
Tolstoi, 109, 205, 340. 

Tolstoi, Lyof Nikolayevitch, ancestry, 
1-6; brothers of, 7-8; birth of (1828) 
and early recollections, 9-16; child- 
hood at Yasnaya Polyana, and loss 
of father and mother, 17-23; 
removal to Kazan and experiences 
at University there, 24-29; leaves 
University without taking his 
degree, to reside at Yasnaya Polyana 
(1847), 30; experiences as a young 
proprietor, 31-33; goes to Peters- 
burg (1848), 33-35; returns to 
Yasnaya Polyana, 35-36; life in 
Moscow, 36-37; puts estate in 
hands of his brother-in-law and 
goes on tour in the Caucasus, 40—47 ; 
decides to enter the army as a 
volunteer, 48; works on "Child- 
hood," 48-49; gambling experience 
at Stary Yurt, 51-54; a non-com- 
missioned officer in the artillery, 
56; visit to sulphur springs of Besh- 
tau, 61-63; publication of "Child- 
hood," 64-67; writes "The Invad- 
ers," 67 ; experiences in warfare with 
Tartar tribes, 67-69; leaves the 
Caucasus (1854), 72; joins the army 
of the Danube, in Crimean War 
(March, 1854), 74; army life, 76 ff.; 
"Sevastopol Sketches," 82-86; mili- 
tary life, and end of army career 
(December, 1855), 87-92; in literary 
circles at Petersburg, 93-100; 
spends summer of 1856 at Y'asnaya 
Polyana, 101; love affair with V. V. 
A. and return to Petersburg, 102- 
109; completes writing of "Youth," 
no; visit to Paris (1857), 116; 
mgers in Switzerland, 1 18-122; 
tours Germany and returns to 
Petersburg, 122; residence during 
the winter in Moscow, with sister 
and brothers, 122-125; the follow- 
ing summer at Yasnaya Polyana, 
126 ff.; the encounter with a bear, 
132-134; writes "Family Happi- 
ness," 134; starts the Yasnaya 
Polyana School and works on " The 
Cossacks" (winter of 1859-60), 137; 
phases of inner development, 138- 
140; second journey abroad, with 
sister and her children (July, i860), 
141; visits Germany, and goes to 
Hyeres for the winter of 1861, 141- 
148; death of brother Nikolai, 146; 
travels through Italy, 152; revisits 
Paris, 153; goes to London, 153-155", 
appointment as Arbiter of Peace 
and return to Russia via Brussels 



and German cities, 155-159; settles 
in country, 160; the quarrel with 
Turgenief, 160-165; service as 
Arbiter of Peace, 169-171; educa- 
tional activities, 174-182; visit to 
Samara, in the steppe (1862), 182 
fT.; police descent on Yasnaya 
Polyana, during absence, 183-186; 
loss of 1000 rubles at Chinese bil- 
liards and resulting sale and publi- 
cation of "The Cossacks," 187-188; 
courtship and marriage to Sofiya 
Andreyevna Behrs (October 5, 
1862), 191-195; life at Yasnaya 
Polyana, 195-197; work on "War 
and Peace" and serial publication 
of, 198-204; takes family to Moscow 
for_ winter of 1867, 215; continues 
visits to Samara, 222, 224-227, 
232-235; compiles educational text- 
books, 228-229; begins "Anna 
Karenina" (March, 1873), 239; 
changes in his relations to the 
Church, beginning with 1876,241; 
completion of " Anna Karenina ' 
(1876), 243; fondness for musical 
matters, 249-252; difficulties over 
Church questions, 261-263; theolog- 
ical studies, 270-277; pilgrimage to 
Optin Monastery, 278-280; neces- 
sity of moving to Moscow for educa- 
tion of children, 284; slumming, 
census- taking, and attempted 
charity-relief work in Moscow, 285— 
289; summer of 1882 spent at 
Yasnaya Polyana, 294; purchase 
of house in Moscow, 295; beginning 
of practice of manual labor, 296— 
297; publication of works given 
over to Countess Tolstaya, 302; 
writing of literature for the masses, 
304 ff.; productivity of year 188 6, 
309; "Death of Ivan Ilyitch," 
"What Must be Done, Then?" etc., 
3 09 ff; further change of personality, 
318-321; temperance lesson by, 
322-323; "The Fruits of Enlighten- 
ment" performed in public, 326— 
328; "The Kreutzer Sonata," 329- 
331; rules for perfection, 336; 
division of property among wife 
and children, 336-337; work in 
relieving famine conditions, 340 ff.; 
attitude of the Church toward, 341— 
343; activities as defender of the 
Dukhobors, 353-357, 365-366; in- 
terest in and treatise on Art, 362— 
365; publication of "Resurrection" 
to aid the Dukhobors, 366; excom- 
municated by the Holy Synod, 368- 
369; attitude of, in regard to his 
excommunication, 3 7 1-3 73 ; remark- 
able public ovations to, 374-376; 
autumn and winter of 1901 spent 
in the Crimea, 379-383; later writ- 
ings, home life at Yasnaya Polyana, 
visitors to, etc., 384-391; descrip- 
tion of visits to an insane asylum, 



466 



INDEX 



392-396; last days at Yasnaya 
Polyana, 397; departure from home 
on November 10, 19 10, 400; 
wanderings of, and death, 402-404; 
mourning for, and funeral, 404-413 ; 
public sorrow for, 414; disposition 
of literary remains, 415-417; esti- 
mates of, as a man and a writer, 
417-423. 

Tolstoi, Nikolai, father of L. N. Tol- 
stoi, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 17; death 
of, 19. 

Tolstoi, Nikolai N. (Nikolenka) , broth- 
er of L. N. Tolstoi, 7, 12-14, 19, 25, 
37-38, 41. 42, 5Xi 53, 54, 59, 60, 
87, 99, 129, 140; Tolstoi's recollec- 
tions of, 10-12; last days and death 
of, 142-146; character of, 148. 

Tolstoi, Nikolai, youngest son of L. N. 
Tolstoi, death of, 237. 

Tolstoi, Peter, fourth son of L. N. 
Tolstoi, 232, 236. 

Tolstoi, Pyotr Andreyevitch, 1-2, 3. 

Tolstoi, Sergyei, brother of L. N. 
Tolstoi, 7-8, 23, 25, 26, 29, 35, 49, 
128, 202; death of (1904), 387. 

Tolstoi, Sergyei N. (Seryozha), eldest 
son of L. N. Tolstoi, 198, 280; helps 
Dukhobors to embark at Batum, 
365-366; translation of Carpenter's 
"Modern Science" by, 367. 

Tolstoian colonies, 357 n., 443-446. 

"Tolstoi Plowing," Ryepin's painting, 

344- 
Toothache, sufferings from, 141, 153. 
Topffer, influence of, on Tolstoi, 112. 
Tours, Eugenie, novelist, 139. 
Trades unions, Tolstoi's views of, 144- 

145. 

Translators, remarks on, 302. 

Tregubof, banishment of, 355. 

Tretyakof's Gallery, 235; "Christ be- 
fore Pilate" bought for, 334. 

Trollope, Anthony, liked by Tolstoi, 
212. 

Trubetskaya, Princess Yekaterina, 4. 

Tula, "The Fruits of Enlightenment" 
given at, 327. 

Turg£nief, Ivan, Tolstoi's opinion of 
"Memoirs of a Sportsman" by, 33; 
mentioned, 66, 80, 93, 128; "Wood- 
cutting Expedition" dedicated to, 
84; accounts of disagreements be- 
tween Tolstoi and, 95~97; corre- 
spondence with Tolstoi on love 
affairs, 1 07-1 08; opinion of "Youth," 
112; influence of, on Tolstoi, 113; 
quoted on " A Proprietor's Morn- 
ing," 113; Tolstoi's visit to, in Paris 
(1857), 116; as a poet, 136; work of, 
discussed by Tolstoi, 137; on Tol- 
stoi's "eccentricities," 138; Tolstoi's 
visit to in Paris in 1861, 153; Tol- 
stoi's almost fatal quarrel with, at 
Fyet's, 161-165; "Smoke" by, dis- 
liked by Tolstoi, 213; opinion of 
"War and Peace" quoted, 214; 
calls Tolstoi "the only hope" of 



Russian literature, 226; opinion of 
"The Prisoner in the Caucasus, ', 
229; efforts of, to popularize Tol- 
stoi's works in France, 240, 258; 
opinion of "Anna Kar^nina, 240; 
renewal of friendly relations with 
(1878), 257; discussions and dissen- 
sions with, at Yasnaya Polyana, 
257-258; visit of, to Tolstoi in 1879, 
267; reads his poem in prose, "The 
Dog," 267-268; renewed praise 
of Tolstoi by, 268-269; Tolstoi's 
visit to, at Spasskoye, 281; dances a 
cancan for the children at Yasnaya 
Polyana, 284; on "My Confession," 
295; note written by, on death-bed, 
to "the great writer of our Russian 
land," 297; death of "the giant of 
the Steppes," 298; reading of paper 
on, by Tolstoi prohibited, 298; 
Tolstoi contrasted with, 417. 
Turgenieva, Assy a, illegitimate 
daughter of Turgenief, 161. 

" Ufanizing," 129, 196. 

" Uncle Tom's Cabin," appreciation of, 
by Tolstoi, 365. 

Universities, revolutionary disturb- 
ances in (1900, 1901), 368. 

Urusof, Prince L. D., arbitrament of 
war by game of chess suggested by, 
91-92; at Yasnaya Polyana, 267— 
268, 273; translates "War and 
Peace" into French, 304; Tolstoi's 
trip to the Crimea with, 304. 

Vanutelli, Cardinal, 422. 

Varsonofy, Hermit of Optin Pustuin, 

407, 409. 
Vegetarianism, Tolstoi s advocacy of, 

344- 

Vereshchagin, painter, Tolstoi's un- 
willingness to receive, 267. 

Viardot, Madame, 107, 112, 118. 

" Village Stories," Auerbach's, 138, 
142, 145. 

Virigin, Dukhobor leader, 354~356. 

" Vlas," poem by Nekrasof, 181. 

Vogel, Professor, 27. 

Volga, journey down the, 42, 224. 

Volkonskaya, Princess, 126. 

Volkonsky family, the, 4. 

Volkonsky, Prince Mikhail, 6. 

Volkonsky, Prince Nikolai, maternal 
grandfather of L. N. Tolstoi, 4-5, 

17. 
Vorgani, Mile., French governess, 

102-106. 
Voron6k, horse, 18. 
" V. V. A.," young lady entitled, 

101-108. 
Vyazemsky, Prince L. D., 377. 



Wagner, Tolstoi's criticism of, 364. 
War, descriptions of, 85, 86, 87; hatred 
of, 91. 



INDEX 



467 



•'War and Peace," mentioned, 3, 4, 6, 
126, 190; the writing of, 198-204; 
serial rights sold to Rus sky Vyestnik, 
201; Turgenief's opinion of, 214; 
chapter from, read in public by 
Prince Kugushef, 215; Tolstoi's 
remarks regarding, as chronicled by 
Schuyler, 215-221; Tolstoi s method 
in, contrasted with Scott's in his 
historical novels, 221; enthusiasm 
of Russian people over, and recog- 
nition of as a masterpiece of universal 
literature, 222; Tolstoi's realiza- 
tion of unsuitableness of philo- 
sophic disquisitions in, 244; judg- 
ment of, according to Tolstoi's 
theory of Art, 246-247; American 
translator of, 348 n. 

Weimar, Tolstoi's visits to schools at, 
156-158. 

"What do I Believe?" loss of manu- 
script of, 298; experiences of, with 
board of censors, 299; translated 
into French by Prince Urusof, 304. 

K What is Art ? r ' work on, 357; analysis 
of, 362-363. 

"What is to be Done, Then?" origins 
of, 288; should be studied by 
charity- workers, 290; completion 
of, 309-310- 

"What is Truth?" Gay's, 333~334. 

"What Men Live By," 254; publica- 
tion of, 281. 

"Where Love is, there God is^ Also," 

254- 
White, Andrew D., criticism of 

Tolstoi by, 419. 
Women, Tolstoi on the peculiarities 

of, 320; on the inequality of, with 

men, 339. 
Women's rights, attack on, in "What 

Must be Done, Then?" 310. 
Wood, Mrs. Henry, novels of, liked by 

Tolstoi, 212. 
"Wood-cutting Expedition," 82, 84. 
Work-room, description of Tolstoi's, 

333, 337- 



Yanzhul, I. L, visits Tolstoi, 324: 
"Kingdom of God is within You' 
brought to United States by, 347 n. 

Yanzhul, M. A., reminiscences of 
service in the Caucasus by, 72-73. 

Yargolskaya, "Aunt Tatyana" Alek- 
sandrovna, 6-7, 12, 35, 105-106; 
assumes care of Tolstoi children, 20- 



21; simplicity of character of, 127- 
128; after Tolstoi's marriage, 196- 
197; last days and death of, 236. 

Yasnaya Polyana, estate^ of, 4, 5, 16; 
location of, and description, 17; 
return of Tolstoi to, from Kazan 
University and attempts to amelio- 
rate condition.of serfs, 31-33; police 
descent on, and search of, 183-185; 
life at, after Tolstoi's marriage, 196- 
197; company at, 267; destructive 
fire at, in 1883, 297; swarms of 
disciples at, 306; play, "The Fruits 
of Enlightenment," given at, 326- 
327; disposition of, in division of 
Tolstoi's property, 336-337; condi- 
tions at, after division of property, 
33 7 - 338; interesting home life at 
(1903), 385-386; final departure of 
Tolstoi from, 400-401, 402; funeral 
and burial of Tolstoi at, 409-411; 
question of disposition of, 414-415. 

Yasnaya Polyana, educational maga- 
zine, 160, 175-176, 183; reasons for 
discontinuing, 187. 

Yasnaya Polyana School, beginning 
of the, 137; description of, 1 75-181; 
reasons for closing, 187; renewal of, 
in 1872, 230. 

Yazuikof, S. T., Tolstoi's godfather, 
10, 11. 

Yepishka, Cossack friend of Tolstoi's, 
48. 

\ eremeyevna, Russian bugaboo, 15. 

"Youth," quoted, 26; writing of, at 
Sevastopol, 82; criticism of, by 
Druzhinin, 110-111; Turgenief's 
opinion of, 112. 

Yushkof, V. I., 24, 183. 

\ ushkof family, Kazan, 42. 

Yiishkova, Countess Pelageya Ilyi- 
nishna, aunt of L. N. Tolstoi, 24-26; 
death of, 237. 



Zagoskin, quoted, 31. 

Zakharin, Moscow specialist consulted 

by Tolstoi, 213. 
Zasyeka, crown forest near Yasnaya 

Polyana, 17. 
Zinger, A. V., 327, 338. 
Zinovief, M. A., incident of search of 

house of, and results, 165-166. 
Zola, not cared for by Tolstoi, 345; 

contrasted with Tolstoi, in extent 

of moral influence, 438. 
Zyelinsky, critic, 67. 



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